August 1, 1994Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Behavioral inhibition, behavioral activation, and affective responses to impending reward and punishment: The BIS/BAS Scales.
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Discussion
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Implication
Validation study demonstrates distinct affective reactions to impending punishment and reward in experimental cohorts, supporting Gray's two-factor motivational model.
Key Points
- To create and validate self-report scales assessing dispositional behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and behavioral activation system (BAS) sensitivities and test their capacity to predict affective reactions to impending punishment and reward.
- Constructed self-report scales (Study 1) and evaluated convergent and discriminant validity via correlations with existing psychological measures (Study 2).
- Created laboratory situations involving anticipated punishment (Study 3) and anticipated reward (Study 4) to test whether baseline BIS and BAS sensitivities prospectively predicted emotional responses after adjusting for initial affect.
- Higher BIS sensitivity significantly predicted elevated nervousness during anticipated punishment after controlling for initial nervousness.
- Higher BAS sensitivity—specifically on the Reward Responsiveness and Drive subscales—significantly predicted greater happiness during anticipated reward after controlling for initial happiness.
- The newly developed BIS and BAS scales demonstrated superior predictive validity for affective responses compared with alternative self-report measures.
Cite This Study
Carver et al. (1994) studied this question.