The subscale specificity of the Affective Control Scale: Ecological validity and predictive validity of feared emotions

The Affective Control Scale (ACS) is a widely used measure of fear of emotion. Although the scale as a whole has good utility and predictive validity, there is little work on the specificity of the subscales of the ACS, which measure fear of anxiety, anger, depressed mood and positive mood. In the present study, we investigated the unique relations between fear of specific emotions and the everyday experience of those emotions. We sampled 120 undergraduate students and tracked their emotional experiences over the course of a week using ecological momentary assessments. We found evidence for specificity in the predictive validity of the subscales. After controlling for common variance across the subscales, fear of anger, anxiety, and depressed mood uniquely predicted greater daily experience of the corresponding emotion. These data also support the notion that those who fear specific emotions tend to experience more of those emotions in everyday life.