CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 2,078Emotion and Mood RecognitionEmotions and Moral BehaviorPsychological Testing and Assessment

Measures of emotion: A review

Open access
Mauss, Iris B., Robinson, Michael D.·2009·Cognition and Emotion
DOI 10.1080/02699930802204677PMC PMC2756702
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

A consensual, componential model of emotions conceptualises them as experiential, physiological, and behavioural responses to personally meaningful stimuli. The present review examines this model in terms of whether different types of emotion-evocative stimuli are associated with discrete and invariant patterns of responding in each response system, how such responses are structured, and if such responses converge across different response systems. Across response systems, the bulk of the available evidence favours the idea that measures of emotional responding reflect dimensions rather than discrete states. In addition, experiential, physiological, and behavioural response systems are associated with unique sources of variance, which in turn limits the magnitude of convergence across measures. Accordingly, the authors suggest that there is no "gold standard" measure of emotional responding. Rather, experiential, physiological, and behavioural measures are all relevant to understanding emotion and cannot be assumed to be interchangeable.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1080/02699930802204677

Cites

216 of 216 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Different discrete emotion categories are not distinguished by distinct patterns of peripheral physiology.

    “Different discrete emotion categories are not distinguished by distinct patterns of peripheral physiology (Cacioppo et al. 2000; Mauss & Robinson 2009), facial muscle movements (Cacioppo et al. 2000; Russell, Bachorowski & Fernandez-Dols 2003), vocal acoustics (Bachorowski & Owren 1995; Barrett 2006a; Russell, Bachorowski & Fernandez-Dols 2003) or by subcortical circuits in the mammalian brain (”

    From The brain basis of emotion: a meta-analytic review (2012) · cites this paper as Mauss & Robinson 2009

    The Autonomic Measures of Emotion summary says that evidence for distinct autonomic signatures of discrete emotions has not fared well. But the same section reports that a small set of measures reliably distinguished particular emotion pairs and leaves open whether combinations of measures might show specificity. The claim's categorical wording therefore goes beyond the review. (LLM, conf=0.86)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Self-report instruments for emotional experiences have well-documented imprecision.

    “An important reason to focus on the physiology of emotional experience and expression along with consideration of emotional language is the well-documented imprecision inherent in self-report instruments for such experiences (Harmon-Jones et al., 2016;Mauss and Robinson, 2009).”

    From Physiological feelings (2019) · cites this paper as Mauss and Robinson, 2009

    The Self-Report Measures of Emotion section documents biases in reports of past and trait emotions and possible limitations even in reports of current emotions. But it says validity varies by the type of report and by individual, so it does not establish imprecision as inherent in all self-report instruments. (LLM, conf=0.84)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • The mind is made up of a constellation of agents that are, in principle, separable and rely on semi-independent circuits.

    “Clinical cases like these, substantiated by abundant scientific evidence (e.g. [51–54]), teach us that our mind is made up of a constellation of agents that are, in principle, separable and rely on semi-independent circuits.”

    From Multiple memory systems, multiple time points: How science can inform treatment to control the expression of unwanted emotional memories (2018) · cites this paper as [53]

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 4

  1. Cacioppo JT Berntson GG Larsen JT Poehlmann KM Ito TA 2000 The psychophysiology of emotion Lewis M Haviland-Jones JM The handbook of emotion New York Guildford Press
  2. Frijda NH 1986 The emotions Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press
  3. Johnstone T Scherer KR 2000 Vocal communication of emotion Lewis M Haviland-Jones JM Handbook of emotions 220 235 New York Guilford Press
  4. Tompkins SS 1995 Exploring affect Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Mauss, I. B., & Robinson, M. D.
Affiliations
  • University of Denver (US)
  • North Dakota State University (US)
Corresponding author
Mauss, Iris B.
ORCID
Venue
Cognition and Emotion
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Published
2009-02
Volume
23
Issue
2
Pages
209-237
ISSN
  • 0269-9931 (ISSN-L)
  • 1464-0600
DOI
10.1080/02699930802204677
PMC
PMC2756702
OpenAlex
W2001097956
Cited by
2,078
References
213
Citations by year
2026: 113 · 2025: 139 · 2024: 148 · 2023: 176 · 2022: 197 · 2021: 158 · 2020: 236 · 2019: 158 · 2018: 158 · 2017: 119 · 2016: 90 · 2015: 96 · 2014: 69 · 2013: 85 · 2012: 62
FWCI
6.34
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Cognition & Emotion (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
National Institute on Aging (R21AG031967)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Emotion and Mood Recognition
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Emotions and Moral Behavior
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Psychological Testing and Assessment
Keywords
emotion measurement, physiological responses, behavioral responses, response systems, convergence of measures, affective domain, emotional state

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review