A six-item semantic differential scale measuring a person's overall affective state at the time of assessment. Items span both valence (bad/good, sad/happy) and arousal-adjacent dimensions (uncomfortable/comfortable, bothered/calm, uneasy/laid back, tense/relaxed), measured on a 9-point bipolar format. Lisjak et al. (2015) used the scale after participants completed tasks in Experiments 1 and 2 to verify that two types of psychological threat (competence vs. integrity) did not differentially affect mood -- confirming that any differences in subsequent behaviour were not driven by mood. Source was not identified. Alpha = .91 in both experiments indicates excellent internal consistency. Notably, in Experiment 3A, the scale's items split into two unipolar sub-factors (uncomfortable/bothered/tense/uneasy vs. comfortable/calm/relaxed/laid-back, each alpha = .94), suggesting that the bipolar format may conflate distinct positive and negative arousal dimensions.
Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.
Lisjak et al. (2015) did not identify the source of the scale. The 9-point bipolar format should be made explicit in questionnaire design. A factor-analytic result from Experiment 3A of the same paper (Lisjak et al., 2015) showed two underlying factors — suggesting that the six-item bipolar version may be best treated as a global summary measure, with the two unipolar sub-scales (discomfort: uncomfortable, bothered, tense, uneasy; comfort: comfortable, calm, relaxed, laid-back) used when valenced affect distinction is theoretically relevant. The scale is distinguished from the Brief Mood Introspection Scale (id:538), which assesses pleasant and unpleasant mood as two separate subscales on a 4-point checklist format, and the Mood Short Form (id:542), which uses 3 bipolar items on a 4-point scale. Used primarily as a covariate or confound check in experimental studies.
Lisjak, M., Bonezzi, A., Kim, S., & Rucker, D. D. (2015). Perils of compensatory consumption: Within-domain compensation undermines subsequent self-regulation. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(5), 1186–1203.
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