Self-Assessment Manikin

The Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) is a non-verbal pictorial questionnaire that directly measures a person's affect and feelings in response to exposure to an object or an event, such as a picture.

It was developed by Margaret Bradley and Peter Lang, and consists of three rows of pictograms, each of which uses a stylized diagram to show a five point scale in each of the three domain: valence, arousal and dominance.

In addition, the nature of the scale being verbal/written makes it questionable as to whether participant groups low in linguistic ability, such as children or people who are developmentally challenged like aphasics, can accurately answer the survey.

These evaluative judgements are judged to be an accurate measure of emotion and three features -- valence, arousal and dominance -- are ultimately picked to be included in SAM.

[8] SAM has been compared to the Semantic Diffential Scale of Affect and has shown high degrees of correlation in experienced pleasure and felt arousal, and it is suggested that SAM may be a better tracker for personal response to affective stimulus, as it reflects the subject's feelings of control in the situation rather than the pictured object's control of feelings according to the Semantic Differential.