Do you feel better or worse? The validity of perceived deviations of mood states from mood traits

Abstract

The advantages of assessing self-perceived deviations of mood states from mood traits in cross-sectional as well as longitudinal studies are discussed in detail. The validity of self-perceived mood deviations is analysed in a longitudinal study with three occasions of measurement and 176 participants. In order to assess self-perceived mood deviations, participants rated the deviation of their momentary mood from how they felt in general with respect to 32 mood adjectives belonging to three mood scales (pleasant–unpleasant, calm–restless, awake–sleepy). Furthermore, mood states, mood traits, and other personality variables (hedonic level, neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness) are assessed by self-report. Using models of latent state–trait theory, it is shown that the self-perceived mood deviation scales are reliable (reliabilities between 0.73 and 0.95) and sensitive to occasion-specific fluctuations (occasion specificities between 0.38 and 0.72). The self-perceived deviation scales show high correlations with latent occasion-specific deviation variables defined on the basis of repeatedly measured mood states (high convergent validity). In contrast to self-reported mood states, however, self-perceived mood deviations show much smaller and in most cases non-significant correlations with personality variables (high discriminant validity). Furthermore, it is shown that self-perceived mood deviations can be used to suppress stable situation-specific variance in mood traits defined as aggregated states. Therefore, it can be demonstrated that including self-perceived mood deviations in analyses on mood–personality associations enhances the association coefficients considerably. Finally, the implications of the results for the individual assessment of mood deviations, as well as for studies on affect and personality, are discussed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.