In psychology, affect is an emotion or subjectively experienced feeling. Affect theory 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 display of smiling. These affects can be identified through immediate facial reactions that people have to a stimulus, typically well before they could process any real response to the stimulus.
Affect theory is attributed to Silvan Tomkins and is introduced in the first two volumes of his book Affect Imagery Consciousness. The word affect, as used in Tomkins theory, specifically refers to the "biological portion of emotion," that is, to "hard-wired, preprogrammed, genetically transmitted mechanisms that exist in each of us" which, when triggered, precipitates a "known pattern of biological events," although it is also acknowledged that, in adults, the affective experience is a result of both the innate mechanism and a "complex matrix of nested and interacting ideo-affective formations."
Read more about Affect Theory: The Nine Affects, Adoption of Affect Theory, Interpersonal Extension of Affect Theory
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