Moodscope 2: reflections and thoughts

One of the more frequently visited posts on this site is the semi-review of Moodscope, written in June last year, and since then, I have received requests to write an update on how I've found it to use. Moodscope is an online tool designed to track the ups and downs of your moods using a simple positive to negative scale based around answering items from the PANAS (positive affect negative affect schedule). These results can be emailed to your friends or other important people in your life so that they are kept in the loop and, if necessary, can respond accordingly. I'll cover how I found using it first and then whether it worked for me.

One of the main comments I had last time is the theory behind the development of the tool. It has been designed based on the understanding of the Hawthorne effect that to simply measure an aspect of psychology is also to improve it. Last time, I considered this to be an incorrect application of the effect and would still stand by this. That isn't to say that increasing self-awareness of our mood cannot also lead to improvements in how we feel - evidence for and against this concept were given last time. Also, in my own research into mood changes over time, I have had participants tell me, after the study closed, that the diaries they kept helped raise awareness of their moods and also how positive they felt. Although, it should be noted that that stray observation definitely does not count as evidence for mood boosts derived from measuring how we feel.

Moodscope has a novel means of actually recording your mood instead of the traditional make-a-mark-on-a-linear-scale approach, meaning that you have to make a series of clicks in order to manipulate cards until the correct score is showing to match how you feel. Despite the general rule for psychological measures that they should be as quick and simple to use as possible (e.g. requiring as few decisions and mouse clicks as possible), the approach employed at Moodscope works well. However, despite the interesting and engaging means of presenting the measures (in a bid to keep people paying attention and refrain from answering blithely), I leant the process quickly and can near automatically make the appropriate clicks to give the answer I want. I imagine that this would counteract the benefits of an unusual or interesting means of giving answers and so things are back to square one.

In terms of using positive and negative measures, it seems a bit of a waste to then only use a single scale from feeling positive to negative. Also, this scale does seem a bit erratic at times although in general it would approximate any overall rating I would make. There's a base line score built into the black-box calculations for establishing mood, in that if you 'game' the results so that every rating given is the minimum of feeling "0: not at all" you get a score of 20 from the 0 to 100 scale where 50 would be neutral and 100 be most positive mood. This score of 20 is also seen if each rating give is the maximum of feeling "3: extremely", even though the subjective state of an individual answering in this manner is going to be greatly different to that of someone who answers feeling "0: not at all" for every question. Separate positive and negative scales would be a better application of the data that the site collects, while maintaining much of the site's aims and applications.

Each day (more or less), I received an email circular from the founder of the site, with some helpful sounding advice, stories or news. It's a nice personal feel to the way that site is run but, thinking as a person researching into the psychology of emotion regulation, I didn't find the 'self-help' nature of these emails to be either particularly useful or informative. Saying that, I'm sure that others might appreciate the emails and their content but we know so much more backed with evidence to not need to rely on a folksy style of advice. The opt-out option for the email circular was appreciated.

Did the site work for me?

Truth be told, I don't think the site had much of an effect on me. Like anyone else, I experience ups and downs in my mood as part of the everyday ebb and flow of life. At times, I feel in command of my emotions and capable of both coping with negative events and regulating my general positive feelings and expressions; while at other times, I'm overwhelmed and don't feel like there is a way back towards a more comfortable state. Over the course of the PhD, I have learnt much about managing feelings and what different regulation strategies may achieve. Conceiving of emotional regulation as a controllable process or more specifically a controlled process, which seeks to reduce the difference between what we feel and want to feel has placed a certain emphasis on monitoring what I feel anyway. Moodscope as a means to help raise self-awareness of feelings simply wasn't designed for me and so I no longer use it.

In terms of its accuracy, Moodscope does alright generally. My top score sits at about 85% (100% being maximally positive) and my average score is about 65%. This reflects how I would describe my overall trend for how I feel. Further to this, a weekly trend in mood prevails through the general noise of one-time events affecting how I feel. Across a week, mood would slowly drop by a small degree before rising at the weekend - this matches known trends and my subjective experience, which indicates that measurements used are the right ones. Unfortunately, I stopped using the site before I made a significant change to my routine and so I don't have any data to examine the effects of shifting my working schedule to part of the weekend on my mood. Lastly, of note is the days in which I report a low mood (my lowest being about 30%). Looking back at some of the days in which I've left notes alongside a mood score, the lower moods about equally coincide with me feeling a conflict of both positive and negative emotions as well as days in which I have just felt low. This seems to reinforce my comments that the site could be better used with the scores being divided into two dimensions of positive and negative affect.

An aspect of the site I can't review is the mailing of mood results to those close to you. I tested its functionality with an alt account and I can say that the mechanics behind it all works. In terms of it actually doing anything for helping with your mood, I can't say because I didn't have these results sent on to others. I understand its purpose in breaking the self-perpetuating loop associated with social withdrawal and depression as it automatically lets others know how you are feeling. I would believe that this is potentially the site's strongest asset, providing that the process actually encourages support from others.

At the time of writing this, Moodscope has advertised that there are changes ahead for how the site is going to work. I wish them the best of luck for the future and hope that as the site grows, their resources for accessible, effective, and evidence based means of regulating our moods does so too.
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