Structure of Self-Reported Current Affect: Integration and Beyond

Current affect has been described with various dimensions and structures, including J. A. Russell's (1980) circumplex, D. Watson and A. Tellegen's (1985) positive and negative affect, R. E. Thayer's (1989) tense and energetic arousal, and R. J. Larsen and E. Diener's (1992) 8 combinations of pleasantness and activation. These 4 structures each presuppose bipolar dimensions and have been thought of as interchangeable or 45° rotations of one another, but past data were inconsistent. Huge but not perfect overlap among these four structures was found here in 2 studies of self-reported current affect (Ate = 198 and 217) that controlled for random and systematic errors of measurement. The 4 structures were integrated into a common space defined by 2 bipolar dimensions.