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Concept
Affect theory
Summary
Affect theory is a theory that seeks to organize affects, sometimes used interchangeably with emotions or subjectively experienced feelings, into discrete categories and to typify their physiological, social, interpersonal, and internalized manifestations. The conversation about affect theory has been taken up in psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, medicine, interpersonal communication, literary theory, critical theory, media studies, and gender studies, among other fields. Hence, affect theory is defined in different ways, depending on the discipline.
Affect theory is originally attributed to the psychologist Silvan Tomkins, introduced in the first two volumes of his book Affect Imagery Consciousness (1962). Tomkins uses the concept of affect to refer to the "biological portion of emotion," defined as the "hard-wired, preprogrammed, genetically transmitted mechanisms that exist in each of us," which, when triggered, precipitate a "known pattern of biological events". However, it is also acknowledged that, in adults, the affective experience is a result of interactions between the innate mechanism and a "complex matrix of nested and interacting ideo-affective formations."
Affect (psychology)
According to the psychologist Silvan Tomkins, there are nine primary affects. Tomkins characterized affects by low/high intensity labels and by their physiological expression:
Positive:
Enjoyment/Joy (reaction to success/impulse to share) – smiling, lips wide and out
Interest/Excitement (reaction to new situation/impulse to attend) – eyebrows down, eyes tracking, eyes looking, closer listening
Neutral:
Surprise/Startle (reaction to sudden change/resets impulses) – eyebrows up, eyes blinking
Negative:
Anger/Rage (reaction to threat/impulse to attack) – frowning, a clenched jaw, a red face
Disgust (reaction to bad taste/impulse to discard) – the lower lip raised and protruded, head forward and down
Dissmell (reaction to bad smell/impulse to avoid – similar to distaste) – upper lip raised, head pulled back
Distress/Anguish (reaction to loss/impulse to mourn) – crying, rhythmic sobbing, arched eyebrows, mouth lowered
Fear/Terror (reaction to danger/impulse to run or hide) – a frozen stare, a pale face, coldness, sweat, erect hair
Shame/Humiliation (reaction to failure/impulse to review behaviour) – eyes lowered, the head down and averted, blushing
According to Tomkins, optimal mental health involves maximizing positive affects and minimizing negative affects.
Official source
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