Compare and contrast observational, physiological, and self-report measures of emotion.
What will be an ideal response?
Observational measures involve a person watching another person to collect data. Researchers using observational techniques to measure emotion typically involve a researcher becoming highly trained in emotion expression, including understanding the pattern of facial muscles that contract when a person expresses certain emotions. Verbal expressions of emotion may be captured in measures such as the number and kind of emotion words that people use in their language, for example, in a conversation or diary entry. Although emotion expression sometimes matches the individual’s emotional experience, this is not always the case. For this reason, observational measures are usually better at detecting emotion expression than emotional experience.
Physiological measures involve assessing biological states and reactions of the human body and brain. Researchers use a variety of techniques to measure physiological aspects of emotions, including blood pressure, heart rate, and skin conductance. They may also include neuroendocrine components of emotions by measuring levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine, or they may measure electrical activity in the brain by using an EEG. They may also use neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI and PET scans. Physiological measures tend to be more objective than observational and self-report measures.
Self-report measures involves examining people’s own subjective experience of emotion. The reports may take a variety of forms, from checklists on which respondents identify the emotions they have experienced in the past week to daily diary methods in which participants record their emotional responses to events at the time they occur. Self-report measures assume that people recognize and are aware of the emotions they experience, yet it seems likely that some people are better than others at recognizing their emotions. Therefore, self-report measures are not always valid and may be biased. Self-report measures are a way to capture people’s internal experiences in a way that physiological and observational measures cannot. Ideally, researchers can use multiple measures of emotion to get a clear picture of participants’ emotions.
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