Development of the Spanish version of the Present Reaction Scale

The “Escala de Reacciones Emocionales” (ERE) is a new assessment tool designed following the model of the Present Reaction Scale developed by Mayer, Salovey, Gomberg-Kaufman and Blaney in 1991. The emotional experience is assessed by means of a list of adjectives which are classified in three broad domains: emotional (e.g., sad), physical (e.g., upset stomach) and cognitive (e.g., indignant). The original items of the Present Reaction Scale were translated into Spanish and also lexicographical studies of emotional language and thesaurus were consulted. An initial checklist of 112 adjectives was developed and was administered to a sample of 248 university students. Internal consistency and principal component analyses were carried out and 28 items were excluded. Multidimensional scaling techniques revealed that emotion-related experience, including physical, emotional, and cognitive domains, could be characterized by pleasant-unpleasant and high-low activation dimensions.