2.3. Procedure

Positively worded items were developed by just the positive reformulation of negative items. For instance, item 2 “Other people’s misfortunes do not disturb me a great deal” was positively reworded by changing the terms “do not” to “do”. Thus, the reworded variant of this item was: “Other people’s misfortunes disturb me a great deal”. In the next step, these reformulated items were added into a larger test battery (study 1) in which the original negatively worded items were also present. In studies two and three, only the TEQ with reformulated items was used.