Glossary
Monitoring of emotional consequences
What is monitoring of emotional consequences?
Monitoring of emotional consequences means asking someone to assess their feelings after attempting a behavior.
How the technique is defined
The record can reveal pleasant, unpleasant, mixed, or absent emotional changes. It does not prove that the behavior caused the feeling, because other events may also affect mood.
Illustrative example
A person records how they feel after each planned walk and reviews variation across days instead of assuming every walk improved their mood.
Evidence and limits
The original BCT Taxonomy v1 definitions identify this as technique 5.4. The point is to notice the emotional experience, not to assume it is positive. The record can inform which activities a person wants to repeat, while leaving the causal question open.