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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The relationship between positive and negative affect in the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule

Boris EgloffLawrence R. BurnsStefan Schmukle

subject

Social PsychologyNegatively associatedPositive and Negative Affect ScheduleTraitContrast (statistics)Negative correlationBig Five personality traitsPsychologyAffect (psychology)Social psychologyGeneral PsychologyStructural equation modelingDevelopmental psychology

description

Abstract The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988 ) is one of the most widely used affect scales. Nevertheless, the relation between its two scales, positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA), is still controversial. Previous results that suggest independence between NA and PA were limited to manifest variables. In this study, the relation between PA and NA for both state and trait instructions was analyzed by means of structural equation modeling. Two hundred ninety-two participants responded to the PANAS at three occasions of measurement. No association was found between trait PA and NA, but significant negative correlations between state PA and NA emerged. In the second step, the observed variance of state PA and NA was decomposed into a dispositional component, an occasion-specific component, a method-specific component, and a component due to measurement error by employing a multi-construct latent state–trait model. This analysis confirmed and extended the results of our first analysis: the dispositional components of state PA and NA were unrelated. In contrast, the situation-specific components were negatively associated. Thus, the negative correlation between state PA and NA could be traced back to situation-specific effects.

yearjournalcountryeditionlanguage
2002-10-01Journal of Research in Personality
https://doi.org/10.1016/s0092-6566(02)00007-7