Chapter 4 Affect as a Psychological Primitive

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Abstract

In this article, we discuss the hypothesis that affect is a fundamental, psychologically irreducible property of the human mind. We begin by presenting historical perspectives on the nature of affect. Next, we proceed with a more contemporary discussion of core affect as a basic property of the mind that is realized within a broadly distributed neuronal workspace. We then present the affective circumplex, a mathematical formalization for representing core affective states, and show that this model can be used to represent individual differences in core affective feelings that are linked to meaningful variation in emotional experience. Finally, we conclude by suggesting that core affect has psychological consequences that reach beyond the boundaries of emotion, to influence learning and consciousness.

Section snippets

Affect in the History of Psychology

Wilhem Wundt (1998b/1897), along with William James (1890), crafted the first psychological constructionist approaches to psychology (Gendron & Barrett, in press). Constructivist approaches are united in the assumption that the mental phenomena people experience and name (e.g., “thoughts,” “emotions,” “memories,” and “beliefs”) are events that result from the interplay of more basic psychological ingredients that are not themselves specific to any single psychological phenomenon. Whereas James

A Modern Wundtian View: Core Affect

Core affect is a state of pleasure or displeasure with some degree of arousal (Barrett, 2006b, Barrett, 2006c, Russell, 2003, Russell and Barrett, 1999). Together, valence and arousal form a unified state, so although it is possible to focus on one property or the other, people cannot feel pleasant or unpleasant in a way that is isolated from their degree of arousal.3

The Neural Reference Space for Core Affect

With several decades of modern neuroscience evidence to draw from, it is now possible to see that Wundt was probably right about the relation between affect and external sensations. Both neuroanatomical and neuroimaging evidence suggests that people don't evaluate an object for its personal significance once they already know what it is. Their affective reaction to the external sensory array helps the brain to make external sensations meaningful, aiding perception in a very basic way.

The

The Affective Circumplex: A Descriptive Tool for Representing the Nature of Core Affect

A person's momentary core affective state (whether it is a simple feeling, part of an emotion, or part of perceiving an image or another person's face), realized by such complex circuitry in the anterior parts of the human brain, can be psychologically described and represented by a single point on the two dimensional space schematically represented in Fig. 4.3. Many readers will recognize this structure as the affective circumplex (Barrett and Russell, 1999, Feldman, 1995b, Russell, 1980,

Individual Differences in Core Affect

For about a decade, our lab used a range of experience‐sampling procedures to observe how people reported their emotion experiences (using simple English words for emotion) in the course of everyday life over several weeks. Primarily with the use the palm‐top computers, we observed hundreds of people reporting their experiences over many occasions. We then treated those reports as verbal behaviors and constructed an affective circumplex structure for each person. We observed significant

Future Directions

Taken together, both psychological and neuroscience evidence supports the conclusion that core affect is a basic psychological ingredient in emotion. Studies examining the circumplex structure of affect demonstrate that core affect is a multiproperty phenomenon, and the structure is robust enough to accommodate many different ways of describing affect. Furthermore, the structure is able to represent meaningful individual differences in affective focus and link them to patterns of variation in

Acknowledgments

Deep and heartfelt thanks to Jim Russell for his wise council and collaborative input into much of the work reported in this paper. Thanks also to Rainer Reisenzein for pointing out the Titchener reference which details Wundt's changing views on affect. Preparation of this manuscript was supported by the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award (DP1OD003312), a National Institute of Mental Health's Independent Scientist Research Award (K02 MH001981), grants from the National

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