Summary of Physiological Measures of Emotion

This chapter reviewed a variety of physiological measures that can be utilized to assess people’s emotional experiences. Most of these measures are responsive to changes in both the PNS and SNS, but often these measures are complemented with pure measures of SNS (skin conductance) or PNS (heart rate variability) measures. The relationship between the brain and emotions is complex. Locationist and basic emotions researchers believe that specific brain structures can be uniquely tied to categories of emotions or valence or emotion. One-network and social constructivist theorists disagree with the one-to-one mapping of emotions with brain structures. Instead, one-network theorists look for connections between structures that control certain processes of the emotion (e.g., core affect, language/emotion words).