Affect, Emotions, Mood in Psychology

 

Affect, Emotion, and Mood: Untangling the Concepts

Psychologists often use these terms interchangeably, but they carry distinct meanings.

Affect is the broadest umbrella, 

   Affect refers to the general experience of feeling states — pleasant or unpleasant, high or low arousal (Russell, 1980). It is the raw “tone” of experience.

Emotion is more specific: 

   Emotion is short-lived, intense, and directed toward a particular object or event (Niedenthal, Ric, & Krauth-Gruber, 2017). Fear of a snake, joy at a friend’s arrival, anger at an insult.

Mood is more diffuse and enduring. 

   Unlike emotions, moods lack a clear trigger. A person may feel “blue” all day without knowing why.

Think of affect as the climate, emotion as the weather, and mood as the season. Each shapes our psychological landscape, but at different scales.

What about fear?

Fear is defined in psychology as a basic, intense emotion triggered by the detection of imminent threat, mobilizing the body’s fight-or-flight response to protect against danger. It differs from anxiety in that fear is tied to a clear, present threat, whereas anxiety is future-oriented and diffuse.

A phobia is a fear but it considered irrational when accepted evidence indicates the person is not really at risk from the feared object or situation.

Affect, emotions, and mood are the "E" dimension in the four functional components (COPE) of the SCOPES model of human functioning used in organizing assessment and psychotherapy planning. Emotions are complex feeling states linked to physiological (P) responses, thoughts or cognitions (C), and usually represented in Observable Behaviour (O). Our Self (S) varies in awareness of our emotions. And our emotions vary with our Social context (S), especially the people present in the context.

Post Author

Geoffrey W. Sutton, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Evangel University, holds a master’s degree in counseling and a PhD in psychology from the University of Missouri-Columbia. His postdoctoral work encompassed education and supervision in forensic and neuropsychology and psychopharmacology. As a licensed psychologist, he conducted clinical and neuropsychological evaluations and provided psychotherapy for patients in various settings, including schools, hospitals, and private offices. During his tenure as a professor, Dr. Sutton taught courses on psychotherapy, assessment, and research. He has authored over one hundred publications, including books, book chapters, and articles in peer-reviewed psychology journals. 

His website is https://suttong.com 

You can find Dr. Sutton's books on   AMAZON    and  GOOGLE. 

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Many publications are free to download at ResearchGate   and Academia  

Find chapters and essays on Substack. [ @GeoffreyWSutton ]

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SCOPES MODEL OF FUNCTIONING

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References

Niedenthal, P. M., Ric, F., & Krauth-Gruber, S. (2017). Psychology of emotion (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Russell, J. A. (1980). A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(6), 1161–1178.