Development and validation of a brief version of the emotion reactivity scale: The B-ERS

The tendency to experience emotions easily, feel emotions intensely, and to experience emotions for a long duration is encompassed by the construct of emotional reactivity, often assessed by the Emotion Reactivity Scale (ERS). Higher emotional reactivity is associated with a wide range of symptoms of psychopathology, and screening for emotional reactivity may be useful as a transdiagnostic assessment. We thus created a brief six-item version of the ERS (B-ERS). Reliability and validity of the B-ERS were examined in four studies ( N = 2874). We confirmed that the B-ERS is highly correlated with the full ERS and yield similar correlation patterns relative to the full measure, in terms of associations with psychopathology symptoms (e.g., borderline symptoms, affective distress), related transdiagnostic factors (e.g., emotion-related impulsivity, emotion dysregulation) and affect in daily life. The B-ERS is a valid and brief method for the assessment of emotional reactivity that can be used for both clinical screening and as a viable alternative to the long form in research.