The Mood Survey: A Personality Measure of Happy and Sad Moods

It was suggested that while moods clearly are subject to tremendous variation, there may nonetheless be some utility in considering long-term differences in mood, that is, in treating mood as a personality characteristic. People who are characteristically at different points of a mood dimension may show real differences in behavior that are not totally obscured by short-term mood variation. This approach may also facilitate the investigation of components of mood other than level, which is the focus of most state mood questionnaires. A personality instrument for happy and sad moods, the Mood Survey, was factor-analyzed and found to have two primary subscales: Level and Reactivity. These intercorrelated subscales were shown to have consistent advantages over a state measure of mood both in predicting personality characteristics and in pointing to new hypotheses about the nature of mood.