Abstract des Autors

Psychological research uses multifarious assessment strategies to describe and to explain emotional and cognitive processes accompanying behavior in order to predict future behavior. However, laboratory assessments and questionnaire approaches dominate psychology, which has been criticized lately (Baumeister et al., 2007). In general, the appropriateness of a method or an instrument depends on the research questions. Observational methods are on the shortlist if behavior is the construct in focus. Questionnaires are appropriate where attitudes or personal traits should be described. Compared to traits, which are by definition stable in time and consistent across different situations, affective constructs like emotions, mood, and affective reactions tend to be highly volatile. Affective dynamics are caused by internal and external influences of high variance, e.g., by bad or good news, by hormonal variations, etc. (Schlicht et al., 2013). Questionnaires to investigate affective states presume too much regarding subjects' power of memory. As different authors point out, memory processes are open to biases and distortions (e.g., Kahneman et al., 2004). Verf-Referat