Having emotions is a natural part of life. We are interested in how interactions with other people affect our emotions. You might remember times when someone else’s presence or something they did or said helped you to manage your emotions or feel better. These other people might include romantic partners, friends, family members, acquaintances, or anyone else. More specifically, think about a time [or times] when you wanted to feel more or less positive, more or less negative, or more or less calm, and someone else tried to help you. The subscales have been consistently found to be elevated among those at risk for bipolar disorder, as measured using subsyndromal lifetime symptoms, as well as those with diagnoses of remitted bipolar disorder.  Among those at risk for the disorder, it predicts the onset of diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and among those already diagnosed, it predicts conversion to more severe forms as well as more severe symptoms of mania over time.  It has been tied to a biological measure of reward, namely eye blink rate while anticipating a reward task.

Here is how we administer the IRIS here, followed by scoring instructions: