Positive Affect

Definition

Positive affect is the pleasant state that can be induced by small things that happen in everyday life. It is one of the most exciting topics currently under investigation in the psychological research literature. The findings suggest that there is the potential for a large impact of positive affect on social behavior and interpersonal processes, as well as on thinking, problem solving, and decision making. In addition, the topic has been studied in naturalistic ways and in a diverse range of realistic settings, and results of these studies suggest that positive affect may be important in many contexts of everyday life, from classrooms to boardrooms to physicians' offices. The field itself is still young enough that there remain some controversies about how to understand what the processes are that are fostered by positive affect, which should be inviting to researchers not already in the field.

The noun affect, as used in psychology, refers to feelings or emotions, and differs from the noun effect, which refers to the result of some action or circumstance. Positive affect, then, refers to pleasant feelings or emotions. From one perspective, positive affect is the most general term for pleasant feeling states, encompassing all the different types of positive feelings and all of their effects—neurophysiological, cognitive, motivational, behavioral, and interpersonal (however, in medical and related fields, the term is reserved for only the conscious feeling state). It can include good moods, pleasant emotions (e.g., joy, calmness, love), mild happy feelings, and their consequences.

Further Distinctions

As affect is studied in the psychology research literature, however, some finer distinctions are often made. Thus, positive affect usually refers to a mild happy or pleasant general feeling state, induced in some simple way that people may readily experience in daily life. Sometimes specific positive emotions, such as elation, joy, or love, are included under the general heading, “positive affect,” but some researchers make a distinction between positive emotions such as love, on the one hand, and positive affect, a more general state, on the other. Some people working on the topic use the term mood to refer to this general state. However, some researchers avoid using the term mood because that term can carry unwanted connotations such as moodiness, which are not what the researchers in this field study.

Some researchers who study positive affect intend to distinguish between positive affect or mood and positive emotions. A distinction has been proposed between these terms, just for convenience, that suggests that affect or mood refers to a general state, perhaps a background feeling state, whereas specific emotions refer to more focused feelings. In addition, emotions also seem to be feelings that are targeted at a particular referent person, group, or thing, perhaps [Page 681]the source of the emotion, and they may have specific behaviors associated with them. For example, if someone makes you angry, you become angry at that person and you may interrupt what you are doing to say something to that person (or worse). Or if something like a big, barking dog frightens you, you feel afraid of the dog and run away from it, interrupting your walk down the lane. Notice that these examples are easier to find in the negative domain than in the positive, but perhaps there are focused positive emotions as well, such as love. Affect, in contrast, has been proposed to be less focused and a more generalized feeling state that can occur as a background state even while the person experiencing it can continue to work on some task or play some game or interact with other people. Affect may influence the way the task is done, but the task can be completed.

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