Elsevier

Biological Psychology

Volume 84, Issue 3, July 2010, Pages 552-569
Biological Psychology

Emotions beyond the laboratory: Theoretical fundaments, study design, and analytic strategies for advanced ambulatory assessment

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.01.017Get rights and content

Abstract

Questionnaire and interview assessment can provide reliable data on attitudes and self-perceptions on emotion, and experimental laboratory assessment can examine functional relations between stimuli and reactions under controlled conditions. On the other hand, ambulatory assessment is less constrained and provides naturalistic data on emotion in daily life, with the potential to (1) assure external validity of laboratory findings, (2) provide normative data on prevalence, quality and intensity of real-life emotion and associated processes, (3) characterize previously unidentified emotional phenomena, and (4) model real-life stimuli for representative laboratory research design. Technological innovations now allow for detailed ambulatory study of emotion across domains of subjective experience, overt behavior and physiology. However, methodological challenges abound that may compromise attempts to characterize biobehavioral aspects of emotion in the real world. For example, emotional effects can be masked by social engagement, mental and physical workloads, as well as by food intake and circadian and quasi-random variation in metabolic activity. The complexity of data streams and multitude of factors that influence them require a high degree of context specification for meaningful data interpretation. We consider possible solutions to typical and often overlooked issues related to ambulatory emotion research, including aspects of study design decisions, recording devices and channels, electronic diary implementation, and data analysis.

Introduction

Theories of emotion and accompanying research methods to evaluate different aspects of emotional experience have increasingly penetrated various fields of psychology and neighboring sciences like biology, economy, and neurosciences. Given the rapid expansion, it is important to examine essential features of this research enterprise. In this article, we first consider basic assessment paradigms that lie at the heart of almost all emotion research and theory, namely, the very common laboratory experimentation that still constitutes the basis of this research and the self-report data, in form of questionnaires and interviews, which are typically acquired. We then introduce alternative paradigms of ambulatory assessment and field experimentation, which, to date, remain relatively rarely used in psychology and emotion research. The differential benefits of these approaches, as well as their unique difficulties and pitfalls, will be considered. Consequently we also attempt to explain how specific methods may help to overcome important and overlooked assessment obstacles and advance scientific knowledge about emotion in important ways. We argue, from the perspective of theories of emotion, that laboratory and field approaches are fundamentally complementary and not opposing strategies: they offer data and insight from different angles. We propose that the affective sciences urgently need to develop clear, well thought-out programs of research that combine laboratory and naturalistic strategies.

Section snippets

The prevailing emotion research paradigms

Almost all current scientific knowledge about emotions is based on laboratory research or inferred from retrospective reports, although understanding real-life emotions is clearly the principal aim. Laboratory and self-report approaches were the most feasible strategies in the past, if not almost the only ones, and still possess distinct advantages: questionnaires and interviews provide easy access to emotion experience and self-observed behavior, and can be used quickly and cost-effectively to

The ambulatory emotion research paradigm

Many issues, undoubtedly, can only currently be investigated in the laboratory in a tractable way. Nevertheless, there are clearly other phenomena, such as emotion or stress at the workplace or in the family context, that require examination under naturalistic conditions. Unsurprisingly, an increasing number of studies consequently demonstrate added value of ambulatory approaches. Ambulatory assessment has progressed most rapidly in medical applications where the practical benefit is evident,

Methods of ambulatory assessment

Progress in psychological and psychophysiological ambulatory assessment has been documented in two volumes (Fahrenberg, 2001, Fahrenberg and Myrtek, 1996) covering a variety of clinical and non-clinical research questions. These methods can be employed to assess a wide range of physiological and psychological parameters. In the following section, we treat specific methodologies in relation to emotion studies. We also discuss difficulties of data collection and interpretation that are unique to

Study design decisions

Designing an ambulatory study can be a challenging task, due to the quantity and variety of stimuli experienced in a real-world environment as well as the fact that the literature on ambulatory investigations is relatively sparse and recent. Laboratory studies on emotion, on the other hand, have a long tradition, and there are many examples of study protocols that have proven to work (Friedman, 2010, Kreibig, 2010, for reviews). Consequently, we attempt here to simplify and systematize

Summary and outlook into the future

In this article, we have attempted to summarize and describe a wide range of arguments in support of increased use of ambulatory assessment in emotion research, as well as provide a number of design options that may facilitate successful ambulatory research. It is becoming increasingly obvious that naturalistic studies employing ambulatory monitoring techniques can address essential and often ignored issues in emotion research. Ambulatory research strategies have the potential to go beyond the

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements

Preparation of this manuscript was supported by grant 105311-105850 (FW) from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the EC 6th Framework Project EUCLOCK (No. 018741) (FW), Basel Scientific Society (FW), grant KLS-02038-02-2007 from the Swiss Cancer League (PG) and grant NCT00106275 from the Samueli Foundation (PG). We would like to thank Andrea Meyer for advice on statistical issues.

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