Emotions: Methods of Assessment

Emotions are brief episodes during which several functional components are synchronized in response to an eliciting event. Emotions can be assessed by measuring responses in each of these components: subjective feeling, physiology, expression, and motivation. In this article we review the most advanced methods that can be used to assess emotions in each of the four components: self-report measures and questionnaires, measures of physiological activation, instruments for the analysis of nonverbal expressive behavior, and behavioral tasks