Measurement error and the correlation between positive and negative affect: spearman (1904, 1907) revisited

There has been considerable debate in the literature on the structure of affect, especially on the correlation between positive and negative affect and the effect of measurement error on this correlation. In this brief article, it is shown that, as Spearman (1904, 1907) noted, the extent to which the correlation between imperfect measures is attenuated by measurement error depends upon the reliabilities of the measures used.