Figure 4.

Measuring trait vs. state. Repeatedly testing emotional state (e.g., across the lifespan of an animal) may yield information about its emotional trait, i.e., the behavior indicative for a particular trait needs to be repeatable (Carter et al., 2013). In this hypothetical example, the JBT and some other tasks that are believed to assess emotional state are applied multiple times (for an example, see Bethell and Koyama, 2015). Possible consequences of repeated testing are summarized. The description of the concepts trait and state are from Strelau (2001 p. 317, Table 2).