Affect (psychology)
Encyclopedia
Affect refers to the experience
Experience
Experience as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill in or observation of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event....

 of feeling
Feeling
Feeling is the nominalization of the verb to feel. The word was first used in the English language to describe the physical sensation of touch through either experience or perception. The word is also used to describe experiences, other than the physical sensation of touch, such as "a feeling of...

 or emotion
Emotion
Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...

. Affect is a key part of the process of an organism
Organism
In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homoeostasis as a stable whole.An organism may either be unicellular or, as in the case of humans, comprise...

's interaction with stimuli
Stimulus (psychology)
In psychology, stimuli are energy patterns which are registered by the senses. In behaviorism and related stimulus–response theories, stimuli constitute the basis for behavior, whereas in perceptual psychology they constitute the basis for perception.In the second half of the 19th century, the...

. The word also refers sometimes to affect display
Affect display
In psychology, affect display or affective display is a subject's externally displayed affect. The display can be by facial, vocal, or gestural means . When displayed affect is different from the subjective affect, it is incongruent affect...

, which is "a facial, vocal, or gestural behavior that serves as an indicator of affect" (APA 2006).

The affective domain represents one of the three divisions described in modern psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

: the cognitive
Cognition
In science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...

, the conative
Conation
Conation is a term that stems from the Latin conatus, meaning any natural tendency, impulse, striving, or directed effort. It is one of three parts of the mind, along with the affective and cognitive...

, and the affective. Classically, these divisions have also been referred to as the "ABC of psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

", in that case using the terms "affect", "behavior
Behavior
Behavior or behaviour refers to the actions and mannerisms made by organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with its environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the physical environment...

", and "cognition". In certain views, the conative may be considered as a part of the affective, or the affective as a part of the cognitive.

This article discusses theoretical perspectives, history and psychological meanings of the term, as well as distinctions between mood
Mood (psychology)
A mood is a relatively long lasting emotional state. Moods differ from emotions in that they are less specific, less intense, and less likely to be triggered by a particular stimulus or event....

 and emotion
Emotion
Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...

.

Theoretical perspective

The term "affect" can be taken to indicate an instinctual reaction to stimulation occurring before the typical cognitive processes considered necessary for the formation of a more complex emotion. Robert B. Zajonc asserts this reaction to stimuli is primary for human beings, and that it is the dominant reaction for lower organisms. Zajonc suggests affective reactions can occur without extensive perceptual and cognitive encoding, and can be made sooner and with greater confidence than cognitive judgments (Zajonc, 1980).

Many theorists (e.g., Lazarus, 1982) consider affect to be post-cognitive. That is, affect is thought to be elicited only after a certain amount of cognitive processing of information has been accomplished. In this view, an affective reaction, such as liking, disliking, evaluation, or the experience of pleasure
Pleasure
Pleasure describes the broad class of mental states that humans and other animals experience as positive, enjoyable, or worth seeking. It includes more specific mental states such as happiness, entertainment, enjoyment, ecstasy, and euphoria...

 or displeasure, is based on a prior cognitive process in which a variety of content discriminations are made and features are identified, examined for their value, and weighted for their contributions (Brewin, 1989). Some scholars (e.g., Lerner and Keltner 2000) argue that affect can be both pre- and post-cognitive, with thoughts being produced by initial emotional responses, and further affect being produced by the thoughts. In a further iteration, some scholars argue that affect is necessary to enable more rational modes of cognition (e.g., Damasio 1994).

A divergence from a narrow reinforcement model for emotion allows for other perspectives on how affect influences emotional development. Thus, temperament
Temperament
In psychology, temperament refers to those aspects of an individual's personality, such as introversion or extroversion, that are often regarded as innate rather than learned...

, cognitive development, socialization
Socialization
Socialization is a term used by sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, political scientists and educationalists to refer to the process of inheriting and disseminating norms, customs and ideologies...

 patterns, and the idiosyncrasies of one's family or subculture are mutually interactive in non-linear ways. As an example, the temperament of a highly reactive/low self-soothing infant may "disproportionately" affect the process of emotion regulation in the early months of life (Griffiths, 1997).

In the last decade, the concept has been adopted in some other disciplines in the social sciences such as Geography and Anthropology. Building largely on the work of Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...

, the focus on affect has brought emotional and visceral concerns into conventional discourses of geopolitics, urban life and material culture, for example. Affect has also challenged methodologies of the social sciences, emphasizing somatic power over the idea of a removed objectivity, and therefore has strong ties with the contemporary non-representational theory
Non-representational theory
Non-representational theory is a theory developed in human geography, largely through the work of Nigel Thrift , and his colleagues such as J.D. Dewsbury . It challenges those using social theory and conducting geographical research to go beyond representation...

.

History

A number of experiments have been conducted in the study of social and psychological affective preferences (i.e., what people like or dislike). Specific research has been done on preferences, attitudes
Attitude (psychology)
An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for something. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event— this is often referred to as the attitude object...

, impression formation
Impression formation
Impression formation in social psychology refers to combining simultaneous experiences into emergent states that relate complexly to the sources. Research focuses mainly on impressions of individuals involved in social actions...

, and decision making
Decision making
Decision making can be regarded as the mental processes resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios. Every decision making process produces a final choice. The output can be an action or an opinion of choice.- Overview :Human performance in decision terms...

. This research contrasts findings with recognition memory
Recognition memory
Recognition memory is a subcategory of declarative memory Essentially, recognition memory is the ability to recognize previously encountered events, objects, or people...

 (old-new judgments), allowing researchers to demonstrate reliable distinctions between the two. Affect-based judgments and cognitive processes have been examined with noted differences indicated, and some argue affect and cognition are under the control of separate and partially independent systems that can influence each other in a variety of ways (Zajonc, 1980). Both affect and cognition may constitute independent sources of effects within systems of information processing. Others suggest emotion is a result of an anticipated, experienced, or imagined outcome of an adaptational transaction between organism and environment, therefore cognitive appraisal processes are keys to the development and expression of an emotion (Lazarus, 1982).

Psychometric measurement of affect

Affect has been found across cultures to comprise both positive and negative dimensions. The most commonly used measure of positive and negative affect in scholarly research is the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). The PANAS is a lexical measure developed in a North American setting and consisting of 20 single-word items, such as excited, alert, determined for positive affect, and upset, guilty, and jittery for negative affect. However, some of the PANAS items have been found either to be redundant or to have ambiguous meanings to English speakers from non-North American cultures. As a result an internationally reliable short-form, the I-PANAS-SF, has been developed and validated comprising two 5-item scales with internal reliability, cross-sample and cross-cultural factorial invariance, temporal stability, convergent and criterion-related validities.

Non-conscious affect and perception

In relation to perception, a type of non-conscious affect may be separate from the cognitive processing of environmental stimuli. A monohierarchy of perception, affect and cognition considers the roles of arousal
Arousal
Arousal is a physiological and psychological state of being awake or reactive to stimuli. It involves the activation of the reticular activating system in the brain stem, the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system, leading to increased heart rate and blood pressure and a condition of...

, attentional tendencies, affective primacy (Zajonc, 1980), evolutionary constraints (Shepard, 1984; 1994), and covert perception (Weiskrantz, 1997) within the sensing and processing of preferences and discriminations. Emotions are complex chains of events triggered by certain stimuli. There is no way to completely describe an emotion by knowing only some of its components. Verbal reports of feeling
Feeling
Feeling is the nominalization of the verb to feel. The word was first used in the English language to describe the physical sensation of touch through either experience or perception. The word is also used to describe experiences, other than the physical sensation of touch, such as "a feeling of...

s are often inaccurate because people may not know exactly what they feel, or they may feel several different emotions at the same time. There are also situations that arise in which individuals attempt to hide their feelings, and there are some who believe that public and private events seldom coincide exactly, and that words for feelings are generally more ambiguous than are words for objects or events. Therefore, non-conscious emotions need to be measured by measures circumventing self-report such as the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT; Quirin, Kazén, & Kuhl, 2009).

Affective responses, on the other hand, are more basic and may be less problematical in terms of assessment. Brewin has proposed two experiential processes that frame non-cognitive relations between various affective experiences: those that are prewired dispositions (i.e., non-conscious processes), able to "select from the total stimulus array those stimuli that are causally relevant, using such criteria as perceptual salience, spatiotemporal cues, and predictive value in relation to data stored in memory" (Brewin, 1989, p. 381), and those that are automatic (i.e., subconscious processes), characterized as "rapid, relatively inflexible and difficult to modify... (requiring) minimal attention to occur and... (capable of being) activated without intention or awareness" (1989 p. 381).

Arousal

Arousal
Arousal
Arousal is a physiological and psychological state of being awake or reactive to stimuli. It involves the activation of the reticular activating system in the brain stem, the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system, leading to increased heart rate and blood pressure and a condition of...

 is a basic physiological response to the presentation of stimuli. When this occurs, a non-conscious affective process takes the form of two control mechanisms; one mobilizing and the other immobilizing. Within the human brain, the amygdala
Amygdala
The ' are almond-shaped groups of nuclei located deep within the medial temporal lobes of the brain in complex vertebrates, including humans. Shown in research to perform a primary role in the processing and memory of emotional reactions, the amygdalae are considered part of the limbic system.-...

 regulates an instinctual reaction initiating this arousal process, either freezing the individual or accelerating mobilization.

The arousal response is illustrated in studies focused on reward systems that control food-seeking behavior (Balleine, 2005). Researchers have focused on learning processes and modulatory processes that are present while encoding and retrieving goal values. When an organism seeks food, the anticipation of reward based on environmental events becomes another influence on food seeking that is separate from the reward of food itself. Therefore, earning the reward and anticipating the reward are separate processes and both create an excitatory influence of reward-related cues. Both processes are dissociated at the level of the amygdala and are functionally integrated within larger neural systems.

Affect and mood

Mood
Mood (psychology)
A mood is a relatively long lasting emotional state. Moods differ from emotions in that they are less specific, less intense, and less likely to be triggered by a particular stimulus or event....

, like emotion, is an affective state. However, an emotion tends to have a clear focus (i.e., its cause is self-evident), while mood tends to be more unfocused and diffused. Mood, according to Batson, Shaw, and Oleson (1992), involves tone and intensity and a structured set of beliefs about general expectations of a future experience of pleasure or pain, or of positive or negative affect in the future. Unlike instant reactions that produce affect or emotion, and that change with expectations of future pleasure or pain, moods, being diffused and unfocused, and thus harder to cope with, can last for days, weeks, months, or even years (Schucman, 1975). Moods are hypothetical constructs depicting an individual's emotional state. Researchers typically infer the existence of moods from a variety of behavioral referents (Blechman, 1990).

Positive affect and negative affect (PANAS
Affect measures
Organizational psychology scholars studying emotion typically use self-report responses to verbal questions to assess participants' current feeling or basic predisposition...

) represent independent domains of emotion in the general population, and positive affect is strongly linked to social interaction. Positive and negative daily events show independent relationships to subjective well-being, and positive affect is strongly linked to social activity. Recent research suggests that high functional support is related to higher levels of positive affect. In his work on negative affect arousal and white noise, Seidner found support for the existence of a negative affect arousal mechanism regarding the devaluation of speakers from other ethnic origins. The exact process through which social support is linked to positive affect remains unclear. The process could derive from predictable, regularized social interaction, from leisure activities where the focus is on relaxation and positive mood, or from the enjoyment of shared activities.

Social interaction

Affect display is a critical facet of interpersonal communication
Interpersonal communication
Interpersonal communication is usually defined by communication scholars in numerous ways, usually describing participants who are dependent upon one another. It...

. Evolutionary psychologists have advanced the hypothesis that hominids have evolved with sophisticated capability of reading affect displays.

Emotions are portrayed as dynamic processes that mediate the individual's relation to a continually changing social environment. In other words, emotions are considered to be processes of establishing, maintaining, or disrupting the relation between the organism and the environment on matters of significance to the person.

Most social and psychological phenomena occur as the result of repeated interactions between multiple individuals over time. We can look at these interactions as a multiagent system—a system that contains multiple agents interacting with each other and/or with their environments over time. The outcomes of individual agents' behaviors are interdependent: Each agent’s ability to achieve its goals depends on not only what it does but also what other agents do.

Emotions are one of the main sources for the interaction. Emotions of an individual influence the emotions, thoughts and behaviors of others; others' reactions can then influence their future interactions with the individual expressing the original emotion, as well as that individual's future emotions and behaviors. Emotion operates in cycles that can involve multiple people in a process of reciprocal influence.

Affect, emotion, or feeling
Feeling
Feeling is the nominalization of the verb to feel. The word was first used in the English language to describe the physical sensation of touch through either experience or perception. The word is also used to describe experiences, other than the physical sensation of touch, such as "a feeling of...

 is displayed to others through facial expression
Facial expression
A facial expression one or more motions or positions of the muscles in the skin. These movements convey the emotional state of the individual to observers. Facial expressions are a form of nonverbal communication. They are a primary means of conveying social information among humans, but also occur...

s, hand gesture
Gesture
A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of speech or together and in parallel with spoken words. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or other parts of the body...

s, posture, voice characteristics, and other physical manifestation. These affect displays vary between and within cultures and are displayed in various forms ranging from the most discrete of facial expressions to the most dramatic and prolific gestures.

Observers are sensitive to agents' emotions, and are capable of recognizing the messages these emotions convey. They react to and draw inferences from an agent's emotions. We have to note that the emotion an agent displays may not be an authentic reflection of his or her actual state (See also Emotional labor
Emotional labor
Emotional labor is a form of emotional regulation wherein workers are expected to display certain emotions as part of their job, and to promote organizational goals...

).

Agents' emotions can have effects on four broad sets of factors:
  1. Emotions of other persons
  2. Inferences of other persons
  3. Behaviors of other persons
  4. Interactions and relationships between the agent and other persons.


Emotions may affect not only the person at whom the emotion was directed, but also third parties who observe an agent's emotion. Moreover, emotions can affect larger social entities such as a group or a team. Emotions are a kind of message and therefore can influence the emotions, attributions and ensuing behaviors of others, potentially evoking a feedback process to the original agent.

Agents' feelings evoke feelings in others by two suggested distinct mechanisms:
  • Emotion Contagion – people tend to automatically and unconsciously mimic non-verbal expressions. Mimicking occurs also in interactions involving verbal exchanges alone.
  • Emotion Interpretation – an individual may perceive an agent as feeling a particular emotion and react with complementary or situationally appropriate emotions of their own. The feelings of the others diverge from and in some way compliment the feelings of the original agent.


People may not only react emotionally, but may also draw inferences about emotive agents such as the social status or power of an emotive agent, his competence and his credibility. For example, an agent presumed to be angry may also be presumed to have high power.

Meanings in art

The difference between the externally observable affect and the internal mood has been implicitly accepted in art and indeed, within language itself. The word "giddy", for example, carries within it the connotation that the characterized individual may be displaying a happiness that the speaker/observer believes either insincere or short-living.

See also

  • Affect theory
    Affect theory
    In psychology, affect is an emotion or subjectively experienced feeling. Affect theory is a branch of psychoanalysis that attempts to organize affects into discrete categories and connect each one with its typical response. So, for example, the affect of joy is observed through the reaction of...

  • Affect consciousness
    Affect consciousness
    Affect consciousness refers to the mutual relationship between activation of basic affective experiences and the individual's capacity to consciously perceive, tolerate, reflect upon and express these experiences...

  • Affect heuristic
    Affect heuristic
    The affect heuristic is a heuristic in which current affect influences decisions. Simply put, it is a "rule of thumb" instead of a deliberative decision...

  • Affect infusion model
    Affect infusion model
    The Affect Infusion Model is a theoretical model in the field of human psychology. Developed by Joseph Forgas in the early 1990s, it attempts to explain how mood affects one's ability to process information. A key assertion of the AIM is that the effects of mood tend to be exacerbated in complex...

  • Affect measures
    Affect measures
    Organizational psychology scholars studying emotion typically use self-report responses to verbal questions to assess participants' current feeling or basic predisposition...

  • Affective science
    Affective science
    Affective science is the scientific study of emotion or affect. This includes the study of emotion elicitation, emotional experience and the recognition of emotions in others...

  • Affective neuroscience
    Affective neuroscience
    Affective neuroscience is the study of the neural mechanisms of emotion. This interdisciplinary field combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality, emotion, and mood.-Brain areas related to emotion:...

  • Affective spectrum
    Affective spectrum
    The affective spectrum is a grouping of related psychiatric and medical disorders which may accompany bipolar, unipolar, and schizoaffective disorders at statistically higher rates than would normally be expected. These disorders are identified by a common positive response to the same types of...

  • Emotion
    Emotion
    Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...

  • Feeling
    Feeling
    Feeling is the nominalization of the verb to feel. The word was first used in the English language to describe the physical sensation of touch through either experience or perception. The word is also used to describe experiences, other than the physical sensation of touch, such as "a feeling of...

  • Negative affectivity
    Negative affectivity
    Negative Affect is a general dimension of subjective distress and unpleasurable engagement that subsumes a variety of aversive mood states, including anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear, and nervousness...

  • Silvan Tomkins
    Silvan Tomkins
    Silvan Solomon Tomkins is best known as a psychologist and personality theorist and as the developer of Affect theory and Script theory...

  • Social neuroscience
    Social neuroscience
    Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding how biological systems implement social processes and behavior, and to using biological concepts and methods to inform and refine theories of social processes and behavior. Humans are fundamentally a social species, rather...

  • Vedana
    Vedana
    Vedanā is a word in Sanskrit and Pāli traditionally translated as either "feeling" or "sensation." In general, vedanā refers to the pleasant, unpleasant and neutral sensations that occur when our internal sense organs come into contact with external sense objects and the associated...


External links

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