PANAS — Right Now (State Affect)
The 20-item Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, framed as a state measure: read each word and indicate to what extent you feel this way right now, today, at the present moment. Ten words measure Positive Affect (e.g., enthusiasm, alertness, energy) and ten measure Negative Affect (e.g., distress, fear, irritability). Rate each from "Very slightly or not at all" to "Extremely."
At a glance
Detailed write-up pending
A full, citation-backed scientific write-up for this scale — overview, clinical use, and psychometrics in the voice of a dissertation "Measures" section — has not yet been authored. To honor the platform's no-fabricated-sources rule, this page currently shows only the verified registry facts above (item count, structure, scoring, and any published norms). No validity coefficients, reliability figures, or citations are shown here that cannot be traced to a named source; the authored write-up will be added once its sources have been read and recorded in the plan-integrity file.
Subscales
Positive Affect 10 items
how much you feel enthusiasm, alertness, and energy
Negative Affect 10 items
how much you feel distress and unpleasant emotion
Example item
“Interested”
Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.
Scoring & interpretation
Item responses are summed within each scale (reverse-keyed items recoded first) and expressed as a population percentile against the cited reference sample, with a reliability-based confidence range where α is published.
Psychometrics & norms
| Scale | M | SD | N | α | Metric |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Positive Affect | 29.70 | 7.90 | 660 | 0.86 | summed raw |
| Negative Affect | 14.80 | 5.40 | 660 | 0.84 | summed raw |
Watson, Clark & Tellegen (1988), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070, Table 1 — ‘Moment’ (‘right now’) instruction, undergraduate reference sample. Positive Affect: M = 29.7, SD = 7.9 (N = 660); Negative Affect: M = 14.8, SD = 5.4 (N = 660). Confidence range uses the standard error of measurement from the published Cronbach’s α lower bounds (PA ≥ .86, NA ≥ .84).
Source & citation
Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070.
Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) by Watson, Clark & Tellegen (1988). Free for research and clinical use with attribution; a commercial-use grey area applies — do not imply commercial clearance.