ABSTRACT
The hallmark of psychology as an empirical science is the reliance on empirical data to support its claims. As traditionally conceived in philosophy and psychology (see, e.g., Brentano, 1874; Wundt, 1896), empirical data comprise all kinds of information obtained through experience, both those acquired through the “outer senses” (the sense-organs; i.e., the eyes, ears, etc.) and those acquired through the “inner sense”, the self-observation of conscious mental states (also called introspection). 1 Common sense suggests that for obtaining empirical information about emotions, both methods—introspective self-observation and external observation—are useful. For example, to acquire empirical information about anger, one can either observe one’s own feelings and thoughts during an episode of anger or ask others to report their experiences; or one can watch what other people do, say, and express nonverbally in their face, voice, and body when they are angry. In agreement with common sense, both introspection and external observation have been extensively used in emotion research since the beginnings of psychology as an independent discipline in the late 19th century (e.g., Wundt, 1896). Over the years, both methods have evolved and now exist in several more or less standardized variants. Introspection-based observation methods are today usually referred to as self-report methods (see Pekrun & Bühner, 2014). Their best-known incarnation in current emotion psychology is the emotion rating scale, but several other self-report based methods useful for emotion research do exist (e.g., Junge & Reisenzein, 2013). In this chapter, however, interest is on methods of emotion assessment based on external observation.
