When used as a descriptor or adjective, affect means to change, and usually refers to an emotion or symptom. Affected, when used in a description, refers to fake or intentionally assumed behaviour (a changed behaviour), i.e., an affected accent. Affect can refer to facial expression or demeanor.
In general, to affect refers to the influence a change has on something else. In this sense, it is often confused with to effect, which generally means either "to cause/make/create a change" or to the result of a change. When used as a verb, "effect" refers to the cause of a change, or as a synonym for "created" or "made" ("The governor effected a change in policy"); while "affect" refers to the consequences of that change ("The new policy really affected our family").
As a noun, "affect" may refer to an emotion or to a psychological/psychiatric state (see below). As an adjective, it may refer to an assumed pretense: "Her affected accent really had an effect on me"; "Her affected accent really affected my view of her".
Affect may refer to:
- Affect (philosophy)
- Affect (psychology)
- Blunted affect or affective flattening, a reduction in emotional reactivity.
- Labile affect, the unstable display of emotion.
- Affect display, signs of emotion, such as facial expression, vocalization, and posture
- Affective science, the scientific study of emotion
- Affect (linguistics), the grammar of expressing affect
- Affective computing, an area of research in computer science aiming to simulate emotional processes.
- Affekt, a German term often used in musical and other aesthetic theory
- Doctrine of the affections, an important theory in the aesthetics of music
Famous quotes containing the word affect:
“The stars which shone over Babylon and the stable in Bethlehem still shine as brightly over the Empire State Building and your front yard today. They perform their cycles with the same mathematical precision, and they will continue to affect each thing on earth, including man, as long as the earth exists.”
—Linda Goodman (b. 1929)
“If we dreamed the same thing every night, it would affect us much as the objects we see every day. And if a common workman were sure to dream every night for twelve hours that he was a king, I believe he would be almost as happy as a king who should dream every night for twelve hours on end that he was a common workman.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes;
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and aves vehement;
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
That does affect it.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)