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Skin Conductance Tests

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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

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Synonyms

Electrodermal activity (EDA); Electrodermal level (EDL); Electrodermal response (EDR); Galvanic skin response (GSR); Skin potential response; Skin conductance response; Skin resistance response; Psychophysiology

Definition

EDA refers to electrodermal phenomena associated with the skin that involves variation in the electrical properties of the skin (Handler et al. 2010). The tonic, baseline, level of skin conductance or resistance at any point is the EDL, whereas the EDR refers to the changes in the electrical properties of a person’s skin. This is caused by the interaction between environmental events and an individual’s psychological state leading to a skin potential or conductance response (Handler et al. 2010). GSR is an older term that is now replaced with EDA. Galvanic implies that the skin functions as a galvanic cell, which involves the production of an electrical current from the interaction of dissimilar metals through a salt bridge. These processes are unrelated to...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Alexandra Sophia Malinowski

Authors
  1. Alexandra Sophia Malinowski
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Correspondence to Alexandra Sophia Malinowski .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Institute of Applied Psychology, Faculty of Managament and Social Communication, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland

    Anna Z. Czarna

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Malinowski, A.S. (2020). Skin Conductance Tests. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_481

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