Session instrument
Pictorial emotion scale
SAM
Measures: Valence and arousal, without requiring vocabulary
It gives valence and arousal at once, without depending on the person having a word for what they felt. It is the honest, poor counterpart of the GSR-plus-facial-analysis pair: less precise, but without the inference that does not hold up.
Asking “how did you feel?” produces answers that depend on each person’s verbal repertoire and that change from language to language. SAM gets around that with drawings: one row runs from a smiling face to a scowling one, another from a jittery figure to a serene one (BradleyCreated the Self-Assessment Manikin, the little-figure scale that measures pleasure and arousal without depending on words.One reference in this work:1994Measuring emotion: the self-assessment manikin and the semantic differentialSee in the bibliography → and Lang, 1994). The two correspond exactly to the two axes this site uses to talk about emotion: valence and arousal. It works with children and with people who do not share a language with the researcher, and it is the measure that closes the gap GSR leaves open: GSR gives intensity without direction, and SAM gives both, at the price of being conscious and declared.
How to run itAfter each step, the person points to a manikin in two rows of five to nine figures: one runs from pleasant to unpleasant, the other from agitated to calm. Less than a minute.
SeesIt covers valence and arousal without requiring words; it crosses language and age.
Does not seeConscious and declared: it measures what the person noticed and agreed to report.