Independence and bipolarity in the structure of current affect.

The independence of positive and negative affect has been heralded as a major and counterintuitive finding in the psychology of mood and emotion. Still, other findings support the older view that positive and negative fall at opposite ends of a single bipolar continuum. Independence versus bipolarity can be reconciled by considering (a) the activation dimension of affect, (b) random and systematic measurement error, and (c) how items are selected to achieve an appropriate test of bipolarity. In 3 studies of self-reported current affect, random and systematic error were controlled through multiformat measurement and confirmatory factor analysis. Valence was found to be independent of activation, positive affect the bipolar opposite of negative affect, and deactivation the bipolar opposite of activation. The dimensions underlying D. Watson, L. A. Clark, and A. Tellegen's (1988) Positive and Negative Affect schedule were accounted for by the valence and activation dimensions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationship in experience between various types of affect.

Investigated the co-occurrence in experience of various emotions placing the focus on positive vs negative affect. In Study 1, 72 college students read stories designed to produce varying levels of either positive or negative affect and then rated their level of both types of affect. In Study 2, 42 undergraduates rated their feelings during emotional times in everyday life for a period of 6 wks. Results show that emotions of the same hedonic valence (e.g., fear and anger) tend to co-occur. Results also show that positive and negative affect do not occur together at high levels of intensity. It is suggested that these 2 facts about the relation of positive and negative affect are probably responsible for the bipolarity that is often found between them. These findings represent a challenge to those who postulate that there are unrelated discrete emotions and that the terms positive affect and negative affect do not describe meaningful clusters of emotions. Findings suggest that if one type of affect is of low intensity, the other type can be at any level from low to high. Therefore, a truly inverse and linear relation does not characterize positive and negative affect. This finding represents a challenge to most structural models of emotion. It appears that mutual exclusion only at high levels of intensity characterizes the relation between positive and negative affect. (2 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Structure of self-reported current affect: Integration and beyond.

Current affect has been described with various dimensions and structures, including J. A. Russell's (1980) circumplex, D. Watson and A. Tellegen's (1985) positive and negative affect, R. E. Thayer's (1989) tense and energetic arousal, and R. J. Larsen and E. Diener's (1992) 8 combinations of pleasantness and activation. These 4 structures each presuppose bipolar dimensions and have been thought of as interchangeable or 45° rotations of one another, but past data were inconsistent. Huge but not perfect overlap among these four structures was found here in 2 studies of self-reported current affect (Ns?=?198 and 217) that controlled for random and systematic errors of measurement. The 4 structures were integrated into a common space defined by 2 bipolar dimensions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organizational citizenship behavior and workplace deviance: The role of affect and cognitions.

To investigate the role of affect and cognitions in predicting organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and workplace deviance behavior (WDB), data were collected from 149 registered nurses and their coworkers. Job affect was associated more strongly than were job cognitions with OCB directed at individuals, whereas job cognitions correlated more strongly than did job affect with OCB directed at the organization. With respect to WDB, job cognitions played a more important role in prediction when job affect was represented by 2 general mood variables (positive and negative affect). When discrete emotions were used to represent job affect, however, job affect played as important a role as job cognition variables, strongly suggesting the importance of considering discrete emotions in job affect research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intensity and frequency: Dimensions underlying positive and negative affect.

Research on emotions and several happiness scales suggests that positive and negative affect are strongly inversely correlated. However, work on subjective well-being indicates that over time, positive and negative affect are independent across persons. To reconcile this inconsistency, 2 dimensions are proposed for personal affective structure: the frequency of positive vs negative affect and the intensity of affect. In 3 studies, 68 undergraduates and 34 33–85 yr old community residents completed daily and momentary reports on their moods. In support of the intensity dimension, the correlations between positive and negative intensity were strong and positive in all 3 studies. The intensities of specific emotions across Ss were also highly correlated. Across the 3 studies the frequency and intensity of affect varied independently. Although average levels of positive and negative affect showed low correlations, this relation became strongly inverse when intensity was partialed out. Thus, the intensity dimension helps explain the relative independence of positive and negative affect. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The personality structure of affect.

We examined the organization of individual differences in pleasant affect, unpleasant affect, and six discrete emotions. We used several refinements over past studies: a) systematic sampling of emotions; b) control of measurement error through the use of latent traits; c) multiple methods for measuring affect; d) inclusion of only affects that are widely agreed to be emotions; e) a statistical definition of "independence"; and f) a focus on the frequency and duration of long-term affect. There was strong convergence between the two pleasant emotions (love and joy) and between the four unpleasant emotions (fear, anger, sadness, and shame). The results indicated, however, that individual differences in the discrete emotions cannot be reduced to positive and negative affect. The latent traits of pleasant and unpleasant affect were correlated –.44, and a two-factor model accounted for significantly more variance than a one-factor model. This finding indicates that long-term pleasant and unpleasant affect are not strictly orthogonal, but they are separable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discrete emotions predict changes in cognition, judgment, experience, behavior, and physiology: A meta-analysis of experimental emotion elicitations.

Our purpose in the present meta-analysis was to examine the extent to which discrete emotions elicit changes in cognition, judgment, experience, behavior, and physiology; whether these changes are correlated as would be expected if emotions organize responses across these systems; and which factors moderate the magnitude of these effects. Studies (687; 4,946 effects, 49,473 participants) were included that elicited the discrete emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, and anxiety as independent variables with adults. Consistent with discrete emotion theory, there were (a) moderate differences among discrete emotions; (b) differences among discrete negative emotions; and (c) correlated changes in behavior, experience, and physiology (cognition and judgment were mostly not correlated with other changes). Valence, valence–arousal, and approach–avoidance models of emotion were not as clearly supported. There was evidence that these factors are likely important components of emotion but that they could not fully account for the pattern of results. Most emotion elicitations were effective, although the efficacy varied with the emotions being compared. Picture presentations were overall the most effective elicitor of discrete emotions. Stronger effects of emotion elicitations were associated with happiness versus negative emotions, self-reported experience, a greater proportion of women (for elicitations of happiness and sadness), omission of a cover story, and participants alone versus in groups. Conclusions are limited by the inclusion of only some discrete emotions, exclusion of studies that did not elicit discrete emotions, few available effect sizes for some contrasts and moderators, and the methodological rigor of included studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationship between attitudes and evaluative space: A critical review, with emphasis on the separability of positive and negative substrates.

Evaluative processes refer to the operations by which organisms discriminate threatening from nurturant environments. Low activation of positive and negative evaluative processes by a stimulus reflects neutrality, whereas high activation of such processes reflects maximal conflict. Attitudes, an important class of manifestations of evaluative processes, have traditionally been conceptualized as falling along a bipolar dimension, and the positive and negative evaluative processes underlying attitudes have been conceptualized as being reciprocally activated, making the bipolar rating scale the measure of choice. Research is reviewed suggesting that this bipolar dimension is insufficient to portray comprehensively positive and negative evaluative processes and that the question is not whether such processes are reciprocally activated but under what conditions they are reciprocally, nonreciprocally, or independently activated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Speaking emotionally: The relation between verbal and vocal communication of affect.

20 male undergraduates role played 4 discrete emotions vocally using sentences whose semantic content was emotionally appropriate or affectively neutral. 48 undergraduate listeners attempted to identify the emotions from content-filtered recordings. With one exception, all emotions were recognized at above-chance levels; sadness was more accurately identified than anger, happiness, or surprise. However, an interaction revealed that the effect of semantic content depended on the emotion being expressed. For instance, semantically emotional (compared to neutral) material aided in the identification of sadness; however, the opposite was true for anger. Multidimensional scaling of listeners' confusions revealed 2 underlying affective dimensions termed "pleasantness" and "energy level." Analyses of dimensional coordinates indicated that regardless of affect, stimuli with neutral semantic content were perceived as having greater energy than those with emotionally appropriate content. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotions and emotional communication in infants.

Important advances have recently been made in studying emotions in infants and the nature of emotional communication between infants and adults. Infant emotions and emotional communications are far more organized than previously thought. Infants display a variety of discrete affective expressions that are appropriate to the nature of events and their context. They also appreciate the emotional meaning of the affective displays of caretakers. The emotional expressions of the infant and the caretaker function to allow them to mutually regulate their interactions. Indeed, it appears that a major determinant of children's development is related to the operation of this communication system. Positive development may be associated with the experience of coordinated interactions characterized by frequent reparations of interactive errors and the transformation of negative affect into positive affect, whereas negative development appears to be associated with sustained periods of interactive failure and negative affect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion experience and expression across the adult life span: Insights from a multimodal assessment study.

This investigation represents a multimodal study of age-related differences in experienced and expressed affect and in emotion regulatory skills in a sample of young, middle-aged, and older adults (N = 96), testing formulations derived from differential emotions theory. The experimental session consisted of a 10-min anger induction and a 10-min sadness induction using a relived emotion task; participants were also randomly assigned to an inhibition or noninhibition condition. In addition to subjective ratings of emotional experience provided by participants, their facial behavior was coded using an objective facial affect coding system; a content analysis also was applied to the emotion narratives. Separate repeated measures analyses of variance applied to each emotion domain indicated age differences in the co-occurrence of negative emotions and co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions across domains, thus extending the finding of emotion heterogeneity or complexity in emotion experience to facial behavior and verbal narratives. The authors also found that the inhibition condition resulted in a different pattern of results in the older versus middle-aged and younger adults. The intensity and frequency of discrete emotions were similar across age groups, with a few exceptions. Overall, the findings were generally consistent with differential emotions theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Are max-specified infant facial expressions during face-to-face interaction consistent with differential emotions theory?

Differential emotions theory (DET) proposes that infant facial expressions of emotions are differentiated. To test this hypothesis, the authors examined infant facial expressions longitudinally at 2, 4, and 6 mo of age during face-to-face play and a "still-face" interaction with their mothers. Infant expressions were coded using the Maximally Discriminative Facial Movement Coding System (Max). Consistent with DET, discrete positive expressions occurred more of the time and were of longer duration than blended expressions of positive affect. Contrary to DET, at no age did the proportions or durations of discrete and blended negative expressions differ, and they showed different patterns of developmental change. One is led to either reject or revise DET or else question the adequacy of the Max system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measurement error masks bipolarity in affect ratings.

For years, affect researchers have debated about the true dimensionality of mood. Some have argued that positive and negative moods are largely independent and can be experienced simultaneously. Others claim that mood is bipolar, that joy and sorrow represent opposite ends of a single dimension. The 3 studies presented in this article suggest that the evidence that purportedly shows the independence of seemingly opposite mood states, that is, low correlations between positive and negative moods, may be the result of failures to consider biases due to random and nonrandom response error. When these sources of error are taken into account using multiple methods of mood assessment, a largely bipolar structure for affect emerges. The data herein speak to the importance of a multimethod approach to the measurement of mood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Patterns of cognitive appraisal in emotion.

Reviews reasons why the 2 emotional dimensions of pleasantness and arousal are the only ones found consistently across studies. Two theories of emotions by I. Roseman (1984) and K. R. Sherer (see record 1984-19281-001) are integrated with the review to develop a model to differentiate emotional experience. This model was tested in a within-Ss design with 16 undergraduates who were asked to recall past experiences associated with each of 15 emotions and rate them along the 2 proposed dimensions. Six orthogonal dimensions—pleasantness, anticipated effort, certainty, attentional activity, self–other responsibility/control, and situational control—were identified. The emotions varied systematically along these dimensions, indicating a strong relationship between the appraisal of circumstances and emotional state. The strength of this relationship was demonstrated in a discriminant analysis in which the 15 emotions were correctly predicted over 40% of the time on the basis of the corresponding patterns of cognitive appraisal. It is suggested that if it is known how an individual sees his/her environment, it is easier to identify that individual's emotional state; conversely, if it is known what an individual is feeling, much can be deduced about how that individual is interpreting his/her circumstances. (59 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Positive Affect and the Complex Dynamics of Human Flourishing.

Extending B. L. Fredrickson's (1998) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions and M. Losada's (1999) nonlinear dynamics model of team performance, the authors predict that a ratio of positive to negative affect at or above 2.9 will characterize individuals in flourishing mental health. Participants (N=188) completed an initial survey to identify flourishing mental health and then provided daily reports of experienced positive and negative emotions over 28 days. Results showed that the mean ratio of positive to negative affect was above 2.9 for individuals classified as flourishing and below that threshold for those not flourishing. Together with other evidence, these findings suggest that a set of general mathematical principles may describe the relations between positive affect and human flourishing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Resting frontal brain asymmetry predicts affective responses to films.

This article assessed whether resting electroencephalographic (EEG) asymmetry in anterior regions of the brain can predict affective responses to emotion elicitors. Baseline EEG was recorded from 32 female adults, after which Ss viewed film clips preselected to elicit positive or negative affect. Resting alpha power asymmetry in the frontal region significantly predicted self-reported global negative affect in response to clips and predicted the difference between global positive and negative affect. Analyses of discrete emotions revealed a strong relation between frontal asymmetry and fear responses to films. Effects were independent of Ss' mood ratings at the time at which baseline EEG was measured. Resting anterior asymmetry may be a state-independent index of the individual's predisposition to respond affectively. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Duration neglect in retrospective evaluations of affective episodes.

Documented with 2 experiments a phenomenon of duration neglect in people's global evaluations of past affective experiences. In Study 1, 32 Ss viewed aversive film clips and pleasant film clips that varied in duration and intensity. Ss provided real-time ratings of affect during each clip and global evaluations of each clip when it was over. In Study 2, 96 Ss viewed these same clips and later ranked them by their contribution to an overall experience of pleasantness (or unpleasantness). Experimental Ss ranked the films from memory; control Ss were informed of the ranking task in advance and encouraged to make evaluations on-line. Effects of film duration on retropsective evaluations were small, entirely explained by changes in real-time affects and further reduced when made from memory. Retrospective evaluations appear to be determined by a weighing average of "snapshots" of the actual affective experiences, as if duration did not matter. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory accuracy in the recall of emotions.

Study tested whether Ss could accurately estimate the intensity and the relative frequency of their positive vs. negative emotions and the degree to which 1 dimension biases the recall of another. Ss completed mood reports at random moments each day or at the end of the day against which were compared their mood estimates. Estimates made prior to the mood-reporting periods were used to control for the effects of prolonged mood reporting. Various types of accuracy were examined: absolute, in which Ss overestimated their emotional intensity and underestimated the frequency of their positive affect vs. their negative affect; relative, in which Ss' relative frequency estimates were moderately accurate; and discriminant, in which intensity estimates were biased by actual frequency, whereas frequency estimates were unbiased by intensity. Ss' accuracy did not improve substantially following the daily recording of their moods, suggesting a problem at the retrieval stage. The theoretical and measurement implications of the results are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensions of affect relationships: Models and their integrative implications.

This article presents data from a number of areas of psychology that have dealt with the issue of whether positive and negative affects are independent--the bivariate view--or whether they operate inversely from each other--the unidimensional, bipolar view. Both models have extensive empirical support. A more integrative view, the Dynamic Model of Affect (DMA), specifies conditions under which both bivariate and bipolar models are valid. It is tailored to analyzing both affect systems functioning concurrently. The DMA is reviewed and then extended to show how 3 major areas of research can begin to incorporate the more integrative framework of analyzing co-occurring types of affect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's emotions as organizers of their reactions to interadult anger: A functionalist perspective.

Children's emotions have been implicated as mediating their responses to interadult anger, but this proposition has not been directly tested. Sixty-four 4–8 year olds (32 boys and 32 girls) were induced to feel angry, sad, happy, or "just okay" before their exposure to interadult anger. Data were analyzed by means of (a) analyses of variance testing differences across conditions and (b) correlations between children's emotions during affect induction procedures and their reactions to interadult anger. Findings indicated that negative emotions increased children's distress and negative appraisals and expectations in reaction to interadult anger, whereas positive emotions reduced distress reactions and increased children's positive expectations about future interadult interactions. The results support a functionalist view that emotions can play a causal role in organizing and directing children's reactions to events and are consistent with research and theory highlighting the role of emotionality in children's coping with marital conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)