Discover Psychology (Feb 2025)

A pilot study for the preliminary validation of the Negative Emotions Scale (NES)

  • Dominic L. O’Farrell,
  • James J. Collard,
  • Peter J. Norton

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-025-00328-5
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5, no. 1
pp. 1 – 17

Abstract

Read online

Abstract The classification of emotional distress has significant diagnostic and treatment implications in psychological therapy. Traditionally models of distress have favoured a unitary model of emotions where an emotional reaction is dysfunctional according to the severity of its experience. An alternative to this is the binary model of emotional distress, which deems an emotion dysfunctional on the basis of the quality of the emotion itself. This is determined by rational or irrational beliefs and behavioural drives associated with the emotion. Some research has sought to investigate the binary model. However, attempts to find support for its theoretical assumptions have been challenging, specifically including a lack of psychometrically sound measures relevant to its investigation. Accordingly, this paper aimed to address this issue by creating a new measurement scale (the Negative Emotions Scale) to provide preliminary validation of the binary model. A pilot study sample of adults (N = 108, M age = 39, Males = 26.9%, Females = 72.2%) completed the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21), the Attitudes and Beliefs Scale II (ABS-II), the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (ATQ), and the Negative Emotions Scale (NES). Exploratory factor analyses indicated adequate loading of NES items to distinguish between functional and dysfunctional emotional pairings for depression/sadness, anxiety/concern, and anger/annoyance. Differences in association between rational and irrational beliefs were not found for anger-annoyance and shame-guilt constructs. However, depression-sadness showed difference according to rationality, and concern-anxiety to irrationality. These findings indicate initial support for the binary model of distress in this pilot study. This suggests future research with more robust analysis (such as CFA) and a larger sample may enhance these findings and provide practical utility for the clinical assessment of emotional distress.

Keywords