{ "worker": "q08-mind", "version": "2.0.0-mind-2", "built": "2026-10-21", "count": 36, "shelves": [ { "id": "attention", "label": "Attention", "count": 5 }, { "id": "self", "label": "Self", "count": 5 }, { "id": "affect", "label": "Feeling", "count": 4 }, { "id": "will", "label": "Will", "count": 4 }, { "id": "meaning", "label": "Meaning", "count": 4 }, { "id": "practice", "label": "Practice", "count": 5 }, { "id": "evidence", "label": "Evidence", "count": 5 }, { "id": "measure", "label": "Measure", "count": 4 } ], "grades": { "A": { "label": "Replicated at scale", "note": "A meta-analysis or multi-lab replication with a stable effect. Safe to reason from; the size still varies." }, "B": { "label": "Replicated, size uncertain", "note": "Independent studies agree on direction; the magnitude moves between samples." }, "C": { "label": "Contested or single study", "note": "One study, a live controversy, or a disputed factor structure. Treat as a hypothesis." }, "D": { "label": "Failed replication", "note": "The reported effect did not hold at scale, or is not distinguishable from zero." }, "P": { "label": "Argument, not measurement", "note": "A philosophical or primary text. It can be right and still be untested." } }, "entries": [ { "s": "james-attention", "sh": "attention", "q": "How much of what you experience did you actually choose to notice?", "a": "William James", "w": "The Principles of Psychology", "y": 1890, "k": "text", "e": "P", "g": "James treats attention as the faculty that selects, from the blooming confusion of the world, which parts become experience at all. 'My experience is what I agree to attend to.' Attention is not a spotlight on a given world; it is the editor of the world you get.", "p": "For one hour, note each time the object of your attention changes, and what moved it — your choice, or a stimulus.", "l": "https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/", "n": "smallwood-schooler" }, { "s": "smallwood-schooler", "sh": "attention", "q": "Where does the mind go when it leaves?", "a": "Jonathan Smallwood & Jonathan Schooler", "w": "The Science of Mind Wandering", "y": 2015, "k": "review", "e": "A", "g": "A review of the mind-wandering literature: the default state of an unconstrained mind is not blankness but self-generated thought — often about the past, the future, and the self. It is frequent, and it costs both task performance and, in the studies that measure it, mood.", "p": "Next time you catch yourself far from the task, write the destination: past, future, self, or other.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015331", "n": "killingsworth-gilbert" }, { "s": "killingsworth-gilbert", "sh": "attention", "q": "Is a wandering mind an unhappy mind?", "a": "Matthew Killingsworth & Daniel Gilbert", "w": "A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind", "y": 2010, "k": "paper", "e": "B", "g": "Experience-sampling app, ~250,000 reports from 2,250 adults: minds wandered in 46.9% of sampled moments, and people were less happy when wandering than when focused — including when wandering to pleasant topics. The causal direction is contested; the association is large and replicated in later samples.", "p": "Three times tomorrow, record what you are doing and whether your mind is on it. Compare the two columns at night.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1192439", "n": "raichle-dmn" }, { "s": "raichle-dmn", "sh": "attention", "q": "What is the brain doing when you are doing nothing?", "a": "Marcus Raichle et al.", "w": "A default mode of brain function", "y": 2001, "k": "paper", "e": "B", "g": "A set of midline and parietal regions is more active at rest than during goal-directed tasks. The 'default mode' — later tied to self-reference, memory and future simulation — reframed rest as activity, not absence. The network is well established; its functional interpretation is still argued.", "p": "Sit for five minutes with no input and note what the mind produces unprompted. That content is the network's output.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.98.2.676", "n": "csikszentmihalyi-flow" }, { "s": "csikszentmihalyi-flow", "sh": "attention", "q": "When does attention stop feeling like effort?", "a": "Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi", "w": "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience", "y": 1990, "k": "book", "e": "C", "g": "From experience-sampling studies: absorption is highest when challenge slightly exceeds skill, goals are clear and feedback is immediate. The phenomenology is widely recognised; 'flow' as a measured construct is looser than its popularity suggests, and the challenge-skill model is not precisely specified.", "p": "Name the last task where time distorted. Rate its challenge and your skill from 1 to 10.", "l": "https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/473222153", "n": "nisbett-wilson" }, { "s": "nisbett-wilson", "sh": "self", "q": "Do you know why you did that?", "a": "Richard Nisbett & Timothy Wilson", "w": "Telling More Than We Can Know", "y": 1977, "k": "paper", "e": "A", "g": "In a series of experiments, people confidently reported causes of their own judgments that could not have been operative — they confabulated, and did not notice. Verbal reports on higher mental processes are unreliable as causal accounts, though they remain useful as reports of the experience itself.", "p": "Recall a recent strong preference. Write the reason. Then write one reason that would also explain it and that you cannot rule out.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.3.231", "n": "vazire-soka" }, { "s": "vazire-soka", "sh": "self", "q": "Which parts of you do other people know better than you do?", "a": "Simine Vazire", "w": "Who Knows What About a Person? The SOKA Model", "y": 2010, "k": "paper", "e": "A", "g": "The self–other knowledge asymmetry model: you have privileged access to your internal states (anxiety, intention, self-esteem), but others are often more accurate about evaluable, externally visible traits — intelligence, attractiveness, extraversion, conscientiousness. Neither vantage point dominates; they see different things.", "p": "Pick one trait you are confident about. Ask two people who know you well to rate it 1–10. Note the gap without arguing with it.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017908", "n": "pronin-introspection-illusion" }, { "s": "pronin-introspection-illusion", "sh": "self", "q": "Why do you trust your own introspection more than anyone else's?", "a": "Emily Pronin", "w": "Perception and Misperception of Bias in Human Judgment", "y": 2007, "k": "review", "e": "B", "g": "The introspection illusion: for your own mind you have direct access and therefore trust what you find; for others you have only behaviour, and therefore infer bias. The asymmetry makes you a poor judge of your own biases and a harsh judge of others'.", "p": "Name a bias you readily see in someone else. Write the last time it operated in you, in the same terms.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2006.11.001", "n": "campbell-clarity" }, { "s": "campbell-clarity", "sh": "self", "q": "How clearly defined is your sense of who you are?", "a": "Jennifer Campbell et al.", "w": "Self-Concept Clarity: Measurement, Personality Correlates, and Cultural Boundaries", "y": 1996, "k": "measure", "e": "B", "g": "Self-concept clarity — how clearly, consistently and stably you hold beliefs about yourself — is measurable and varies widely. Low clarity goes with rumination, neuroticism and lower wellbeing; it is a property of the self-model, not a verdict on the person.", "p": "Write five statements beginning 'I am'. Note which ones you would still endorse in a year.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.1.141", "n": "parfit-bundle" }, { "s": "parfit-bundle", "sh": "self", "q": "Is there an owner behind the experiences, or only the series?", "a": "Derek Parfit", "w": "Reasons and Persons", "y": 1984, "k": "book", "e": "P", "g": "Parfit argues for reductionism about personal identity: what exists is a chain of experiences, memories and dispositions, not a further fact of 'me' that owns them. The argument is philosophical, not empirical, but it sets the question the empirical work keeps circling: which of your self-descriptions survive scrutiny?", "p": "Describe yourself without using any noun that implies a fixed essence. Note what is left.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1093/019824908X.001.0001", "n": "barrett-differentiation" }, { "s": "barrett-differentiation", "sh": "affect", "q": "Does naming a feeling change it?", "a": "Lisa Feldman Barrett et al.", "w": "Knowing What You're Feeling and Knowing What to Do About It", "y": 2001, "k": "paper", "e": "B", "g": "People differ in how finely they distinguish emotional states — 'bad' versus 'irritated, disappointed, and tired'. Higher differentiation predicts better emotion regulation, less binge drinking and less aggression. Granularity appears to be a skill, not a fixed trait.", "p": "Next unpleasant feeling, name it with three candidate words instead of one. Keep the one that fits best.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930143000239", "n": "seth-interoception" }, { "s": "seth-interoception", "sh": "affect", "q": "Is emotion in the event or in the body's model of it?", "a": "Anil Seth", "w": "Interoceptive Inference, Emotion, and the Embodied Self", "y": 2013, "k": "paper", "e": "B", "g": "Emotion can be framed as the brain's inference about the cause of its own bodily signals — a prediction, corrected by input, rather than a readout. This makes emotion partly constructed and partly embodied, and explains why the same arousal can be labelled fear or excitement depending on context.", "p": "Find your pulse now. Note the story you would tell about that sensation if you did not know its cause.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.09.007", "n": "wilson-gilbert-durability" }, { "s": "wilson-gilbert-durability", "sh": "affect", "q": "How wrong are you about how long something will hurt?", "a": "Timothy Wilson & Daniel Gilbert", "w": "Affective Forecasting", "y": 2003, "k": "review", "e": "A", "g": "People systematically overestimate the intensity and duration of future emotional reactions. A central cause is immune neglect: we underestimate the mind's capacity to rationalise, reframe and recover. The error is robust across events, including ones people have experienced before.", "p": "Recall a past event you expected to devastate you. Write how long you expected it to last and how long it did.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(03)01006-2", "n": "gross-reappraisal" }, { "s": "gross-reappraisal", "sh": "affect", "q": "Is it better to change the situation or to suppress the reaction?", "a": "James Gross", "w": "Antecedent- and Response-Focused Emotion Regulation", "y": 1998, "k": "paper", "e": "A", "g": "Reappraisal — reinterpreting what an event means before the response runs — reduces negative experience with little physiological cost. Suppression — inhibiting the expression after the response has begun — reduces visible expression but leaves or raises physiological arousal and impairs memory for the interaction.", "p": "Before the next provocation, write one alternative meaning of the event. Then respond.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.1.224", "n": "frankfurt-second-order" }, { "s": "frankfurt-second-order", "sh": "will", "q": "Do you want the wants you have?", "a": "Harry Frankfurt", "w": "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person", "y": 1971, "k": "paper", "e": "P", "g": "A person is distinguished not by having desires but by having desires about those desires. Freedom of the will is the alignment of first-order impulses with second-order endorsement — you can act on an urge you disown, and that is the shape of unfreedom.", "p": "Name one urge you acted on this week that you would not endorse on reflection. That gap is the thing to measure.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.2307/2024717", "n": "gollwitzer-implementation-intentions" }, { "s": "gollwitzer-implementation-intentions", "sh": "will", "q": "Why does deciding fail where a plan succeeds?", "a": "Peter Gollwitzer & Paschal Sheeran", "w": "Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-Analysis", "y": 2006, "k": "review", "e": "A", "g": "Across 94 studies, if-then plans ('if situation X arises, I will do Y') raise goal attainment with a medium-to-large effect, d ≈ 0.65. The mechanism is cue-triggered automaticity: the decision is made in advance, so it does not have to be won again at the moment of action.", "p": "Write one if-then plan for tomorrow: 'If [time/place/cue], then I will [specific act].'", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1", "n": "doris-situationism" }, { "s": "doris-situationism", "sh": "will", "q": "How much of your behaviour is character, and how much is situation?", "a": "John Doris", "w": "Lack of Character", "y": 2002, "k": "book", "e": "B", "g": "Doris reads the social-psychology record — bystander effects, Good Samaritan studies, mood and helping — as evidence that behaviour is highly situation-sensitive and that global character traits predict weakly across contexts. The claim is contested; the narrow point, that context moves behaviour more than people expect, is well supported.", "p": "Name a trait you claim. Then name the situation in which you reliably do not show it.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511613292", "n": "hagger-ego-depletion" }, { "s": "hagger-ego-depletion", "sh": "will", "q": "Does willpower run out like a battery?", "a": "Martin Hagger et al.", "w": "A Multilab Preregistered Replication of the Ego-Depletion Effect", "y": 2016, "k": "paper", "e": "D", "g": "Twenty-three labs, preregistered protocol, 2,141 participants: the ego-depletion effect was d = 0.04 and not distinguishable from zero. The 'willpower as a depletable resource' story that dominated self-control writing for two decades did not replicate under controlled conditions.", "p": "Notice where you explain a failure as 'no willpower left'. Substitute one situational explanation and one planning explanation.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616652873", "n": "wolf-meaning" }, { "s": "wolf-meaning", "sh": "meaning", "q": "Is a felt sense of meaning the same as a life that means something?", "a": "Susan Wolf", "w": "Meaning in Life and Why It Matters", "y": "2010", "k": "monograph", "e": "P", "g": "Wolf argues meaning requires active engagement with something whose value is independent of your caring about it. The felt sense of meaning is neither necessary nor sufficient: you can feel meaning in a project that is worthless, and miss meaning in one that matters. This is an argument, not a measurement.", "p": "List the three things that take most of your hours. For each, write one sentence on why it would matter to someone who does not know you.", "l": "https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691154504/meaning-in-life-and-why-it-matters", "n": "ryff-wellbeing" }, { "s": "ryff-wellbeing", "sh": "meaning", "q": "Which kind of wellbeing are you actually short of?", "a": "Carol Ryff", "w": "Happiness Is Everything, or Is It? JPSP 57", "y": "1989", "k": "empirical paper", "e": "B", "g": "Wellbeing is modelled as six separable dimensions: self-acceptance, positive relations, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose, and personal growth. The scales are widely used and reasonably reliable. The important consequence is that a single happiness number hides the profile, and two people with the same score can be short of opposite things.", "p": "Rate the six dimensions 1-7 from memory. Then pick the lowest and find one concrete fact from the last month that supports or contradicts the rating.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.57.6.1069", "n": "baumeister-happy-meaningful" }, { "s": "baumeister-happy-meaningful", "sh": "meaning", "q": "Are the things that make you happy the things that make your life add up?", "a": "Roy Baumeister, Kathleen Vohs, Jennifer Aaker and Emily Garbinsky", "w": "Some Key Differences Between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life, Journal of Positive Psychology 8", "y": "2013", "k": "empirical paper", "e": "B", "g": "In survey data, happiness and meaningfulness correlated but diverged in patterned ways. Meaning was linked more to giving to others, to struggle, and to reflection on the past and future; happiness was linked more to receiving, to feeling healthy, and to living in the present. The study is correlational, so it cannot say which produces which.", "p": "Name one thing you do because it is pleasant and one because it is worth it. Note which one you would defend if challenged.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2013.830764", "n": "crawford-craft" }, { "s": "crawford-craft", "sh": "meaning", "q": "Why does making a thing with your hands change how you think about yourself?", "a": "Matthew Crawford", "w": "Shop Class as Soulcraft", "y": "2009", "k": "monograph", "e": "P", "g": "Crawford argues that manual work with a real object provides a kind of agency and reality-testing that abstract work does not: the object resists, and resistance is information. The claim is philosophical and biographical, not experimental. It is included because it names a mechanism the empirical literature rarely measures: feedback that cannot be argued with.", "p": "Pick one task with an external check this week: something that can be wrong in a way you cannot talk your way out of. Record how long you spent before checking.", "l": "https://openlibrary.org/search?q=shop+class+as+soulcraft", "n": "pennebaker-writing" }, { "s": "pennebaker-writing", "sh": "practice", "q": "Does writing about what happened do anything?", "a": "Joanne Frattaroli, synthesising Pennebaker's programme", "w": "Experimental Disclosure and Its Moderators: A Meta-Analysis, Psychological Bulletin 132", "y": "2006", "k": "meta-analysis", "e": "B", "g": "Across 146 studies the overall effect of expressive writing on outcomes was small, r about .075, with the clearest effects on physical health reports and smaller effects on mood. It is real, it is cheap, and it is not a treatment. The honest reading is a small average effect with wide variation, not a cure.", "p": "Write for fifteen minutes on one unresolved event, without editing. Then write one line: what did I leave out. Do this three times, then stop.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.823", "n": "kross-distancing" }, { "s": "kross-distancing", "sh": "practice", "q": "What changes when you use your own name in your head?", "a": "Ethan Kross and Ozlem Ayduk", "w": "Making Meaning out of Negative Experiences by Self-Distancing, Current Directions in Psychological Science 20", "y": "2011", "k": "review", "e": "B", "g": "Shifting from a first-person to a third-person perspective on a memory or a problem reduces emotional reactivity and improves reasoning about it, across laboratory and field studies. The mechanism is not suppression: the event is still processed, from further away. Effects are moderate and not universal.", "p": "Take a current worry. Write two sentences about it as if about a person you are advising, using their name. Note what you would tell them that you have not told yourself.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411408883", "n": "hayes-defusion" }, { "s": "hayes-defusion", "sh": "practice", "q": "Is the problem the thought, or your relationship to it?", "a": "Frank Bond and colleagues, on Hayes's model", "w": "Preliminary Psychometric Properties of the AAQ-II, Behavior Therapy 42", "y": "2011", "k": "scale validation", "e": "B", "g": "Psychological flexibility is defined as acting on values while unwanted thoughts and feelings are present, rather than acting to control them. The AAQ-II measures the inverse: experiential avoidance. The model is coherent and the scale is reliable; outcome trials of ACT show effects comparable to other established therapies rather than superior ones.", "p": "Name a thought you have been arguing with. Write: I am having the thought that X. Then name the next action your values imply, and whether the thought stops it.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2011.03.007", "n": "trapnell-rumination" }, { "s": "trapnell-rumination", "sh": "practice", "q": "Is thinking about yourself helping, and how would you tell?", "a": "Paul Trapnell and Jennifer Campbell", "w": "Private Self-Consciousness and the Five-Factor Model, JPSP 76", "y": "1999", "k": "scale validation", "e": "B", "g": "The same behaviour, thinking about oneself, splits into two factors with opposite correlates. Reflection is curiosity about oneself and tracks with openness. Rumination is repetitive, self-focused attention on threat and loss, and tracks with neuroticism. The distinguishing feature is not frequency but whether the loop terminates in a conclusion or an action.", "p": "For one week, tag each self-focused episode: did it end in a decision, or did it return to the start. Count both.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.2.284", "n": "neff-compassion" }, { "s": "neff-compassion", "sh": "practice", "q": "What happens if you drop the self-criticism, without dropping the standard?", "a": "Kristin Neff", "w": "The Development and Validation of a Scale to Measure Self-Compassion, Self and Identity 2", "y": "2003", "k": "scale validation", "e": "C", "g": "Self-compassion is defined as kindness toward oneself in failure, recognition of shared humanity, and mindful holding of painful feeling, without self-judgement, isolation, or over-identification. It correlates with lower anxiety and depression. The scale's six-factor structure has been disputed in later work, so treat the total score as more reliable than the subscales.", "p": "Recall one failure this month. Write the sentence you said to yourself. Rewrite it as what you would say to a friend in the same position, keeping every factual claim.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.822", "n": "osc-2015" }, { "s": "osc-2015", "sh": "evidence", "q": "How much of what you believe about the mind would survive a replication?", "a": "Open Science Collaboration", "w": "Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, Science 349", "y": "2015", "k": "multi-lab replication", "e": "A", "g": "One hundred studies from three psychology journals were replicated by independent teams. 97 per cent of the originals reported significant results; 36 per cent of the replications did. Mean effect size roughly halved. This is the base rate against which any single striking finding should be read.", "p": "Take one psychological claim you repeat about yourself. Ask what the study behind it was, how many participants, and whether anyone repeated it.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4716", "n": "sisk-growth-mindset" }, { "s": "sisk-growth-mindset", "sh": "evidence", "q": "Do mindset interventions change outcomes, and by how much?", "a": "Victoria Sisk, Alexander Burgoyne, Jingze Sun, Jennifer Butler and Brooke Macnamara", "w": "To What Extent and Under Which Circumstances Are Growth Mind-Sets Important to Academic Achievement? Psychological Science 29", "y": "2018", "k": "meta-analysis", "e": "A", "g": "Across 273 studies the overall correlation between mindset and achievement was small, r about .10, and interventions had a small average effect, d about 0.08, concentrated in low-achieving or high-risk students. The large claims made for mindset in popular accounts are not supported by the pooled evidence.", "p": "Find one belief you hold in the form ability is fixed. Write the evidence for it. Then write what would have to happen for you to change it.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617739704", "n": "oswald-iat" }, { "s": "oswald-iat", "sh": "evidence", "q": "Does a test of implicit bias predict what you actually do?", "a": "Frederick Oswald, Gregory Mitchell, Hart Blanton, James Jaccard and Philip Tetlock", "w": "Predicting Ethnic and Racial Discrimination: A Meta-Analysis of IAT Criterion Studies, JPSP 105", "y": "2013", "k": "meta-analysis", "e": "D", "g": "Across criterion studies, implicit measures predicted discriminatory behaviour weakly, with correlations in the region of .15 and substantial heterogeneity. The IAT measures something reliably; the inference from that something to behaviour is much weaker than its public use implies.", "p": "Distinguish two claims: I have an association, and I act on it. Note which one any given test actually measures.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032734", "n": "ranehill-power-posing" }, { "s": "ranehill-power-posing", "sh": "evidence", "q": "Does holding a pose change your hormones?", "a": "Eva Ranehill and colleagues", "w": "Assessing the Robustness of Power Posing, Psychological Science 26", "y": "2015", "k": "replication", "e": "D", "g": "A preregistered replication with 200 participants found the reported effect of expansive posture on risk tolerance, sense of power, and testosterone did not appear. A later meta-analysis found the felt-power effect small and the hormonal effect absent. What survives is narrow: some people report feeling slightly more powerful.", "p": "Before adopting a bodily technique, ask which measured outcome it changes and whether that measurement replicated.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614553946", "n": "bolier-ppi" }, { "s": "bolier-ppi", "sh": "evidence", "q": "How large are positive psychology interventions, really?", "a": "Linda Bolier and colleagues", "w": "Positive Psychology Interventions: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Studies, BMC Public Health 13", "y": "2013", "k": "meta-analysis", "e": "A", "g": "Across 39 randomised studies, positive psychology interventions produced small effects on subjective wellbeing, standardised mean difference about 0.34, and on psychological wellbeing about 0.20, with a smaller effect on depression. Effects were heterogeneous and often measured against weak controls. Small and real is the correct reading.", "p": "Before starting a practice, write the effect size you expect and how you will measure it in yourself. Then measure.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-119", "n": "diener-swls" }, { "s": "diener-swls", "sh": "measure", "q": "What does a life satisfaction score actually measure?", "a": "Ed Diener, Robert Emmons, Randy Larsen and Sharon Griffin", "w": "The Satisfaction With Life Scale, Journal of Personality Assessment 49", "y": "1985", "k": "scale validation", "e": "B", "g": "Five items asking for a global cognitive judgement of one's life against one's own standard. It is stable, brief, and widely used. It measures a judgement made at the moment of answering, not mood, not functioning, and not whether the standard is reasonable. Scores are sensitive to question order and current mood.", "p": "Answer the five items now, then again in two weeks. A change of more than a few points is more likely to be about the week than about the life.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa4901_13", "n": "watson-panas" }, { "s": "watson-panas", "sh": "measure", "q": "Are your good days and bad days opposite ends of one scale?", "a": "David Watson, Lee Anna Clark and Auke Tellegen", "w": "Development and Validation of Brief Measures of Positive and Negative Affect, JPSP 54", "y": "1988", "k": "scale validation", "e": "B", "g": "Positive and negative affect are separable dimensions, not two ends of one. A day can be high on both. The PANAS measures each with ten adjectives over a stated timeframe, and the timeframe matters: state and trait versions are different instruments.", "p": "Rate ten adjectives for today, positive and negative separately. Track both for a week rather than computing a single net mood.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063", "n": "soto-bfi2" }, { "s": "soto-bfi2", "sh": "measure", "q": "Are you a type of person, or a distribution of states?", "a": "Christopher Soto and Oliver John", "w": "The Next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2), JPSP 113", "y": "2017", "k": "scale validation", "e": "B", "g": "The Big Five are the most replicated structure in personality description. The BFI-2 measures them with 60 items and fifteen facets, and it is a trait instrument: it asks for general tendencies. Experience-sampling work shows the same person's state levels move across situations by amounts comparable to the differences between people.", "p": "Rate your extraversion for today, then for the last year. If the two differ, the trait is a summary of states, not a cause of them.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000096", "n": "nolen-rrs" }, { "s": "nolen-rrs", "sh": "measure", "q": "Can you measure the difference between thinking and brooding?", "a": "Susan Nolen-Hoeksema and Jannay Morrow", "w": "A Prospective Study of Depression and Posttraumatic Stress After a Natural Disaster, JPSP 61", "y": "1991", "k": "scale validation", "e": "B", "g": "The Ruminative Responses Scale measures repetitive self-focus in response to distress. Later work splits it into brooding, a passive comparison of one's situation with an unachieved standard, and reflection, a purposeful attempt to understand. Only brooding consistently predicts depression. A total score blurs the distinction that matters.", "p": "Separate this week's self-focused episodes into brooding and reflection using that definition. Count each. Act on the ratio, not the total.", "l": "https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.61.1.115", "n": null } ] }