The experience and meta-experience of mood.

TLDR

Mood experience consists of a direct component and a meta‑level of thoughts and feelings about the mood. The study aimed to conceptualize meta‑mood experience as the product of a regulatory process that monitors, evaluates, and sometimes changes mood. Study 1 tested the Watson‑Tellegen two‑dimensional mood structure on 1,572 participants across three scales, including a brief scale, while Study 2 administered a newly developed meta‑mood scale to 160 participants alongside the brief mood scale. The Watson‑Tellegen structure was confirmed across all scales, meta‑mood dimensions varied across moods, and meta‑mood experience appears to be a key component of mood phenomenology.

Abstract

Mood experience is comprised of at least two elements: the direct experience of the mood and a meta-level of experience that consists of thoughts and feelings about the mood. In Study 1, a two-dimensional structure for the direct experience of mood (Watson & Tellegen, 1985) was tested for its fit to the responses of 1,572 subjects who each completed one of three different mood scales, including a brief scale developed to assist future research. The Watson and Tellegen structure was supported across all three scales. In Study 2, meta-mood experience was conceptualized as the product of a mood regulatory process that monitors, evaluates, and at times changes mood. A scale to measure meta-mood experience was administered to 160 participants along with the brief mood scale. People's levels on the meta-mood dimensions were found to differ across moods. Meta-mood experiences may also constitute an important part of the phenomenology of the personal experience of mood.