Affect: Theory and Research

Abstract

Affective experiences add palettes of colour to our life, and to a large extent determine who we really are or will become. This chapter is devoted to a discussion of the profound impact of affect (e.g. emotions, moods, attitudes, evaluations) on our cognition. In the first part of the chapter, I provide a short history of thought about the concept of emotion, along with the ambiguities and tensions surrounding the concept. Here, the contemporary models of emotion are discussed and evaluated, i.e. the basic emotion model, the appraisal model, and the psychological construction model. In the second part of the chapter, I shift to the discussion of more basic affective phenomena that are believed to be the “building blocks” of emotion. This discussion starts with the notion of core affect—a new framework in affective sciences—followed by the review of empirical findings in the area of affective evaluation. Next, I present two competing views on the issue of whether affect dominates over cognition, i.e. the affective primacy hypothesis and the cognitive primacy hypothesis. The chapter ends with a discussion of empirical findings indicating that affect may influence our behaviour outside of our awareness, followed by the evidence from affective neuroscience showing the brain’s widespread activation to affect.