The Situational Self-Statement and Affective State Inventory: A Research Scale to Assess Cognitions and Affects.

This paper describes the development, utility, and validity of the Situational Self-statement and Affective State Inventory (SSASI), a research inventory designed to assess cognitions and affects across a variety of five hypothetical situations. Each situation describes a realistic incident involving interpersonal conflict, principally criticism or rejection by another person. Self-statements and affective state descriptors listed for each situation are categorized as angry, anxious, suspicious, depressed, and rational. The validation of the inventory on an undergraduate population is described, as is its utilization to examine the correlational relationship between self-statements and affective states. The SSASI is viewed as suitable for examining relationships between self-statements, affects, and behavioral criterion variables; it would be of interest to investigators developing cognitive assessment inventories for clinical applications. Appendices contain both actor and observer versions of the SSASI and their accompanying directions for administration. (Author/NRB)