Handbook of Psychology, Volume 5, Personality and Social Psychology

Core Affect as a Point of Departure 291

group or order unique events). Programs based on a concep-
tualist stance hold that nonscientists and scientists alike hold
conceptualizations of reality. The history of science teaches
that common-sense conceptualizations can be improved and
ultimately replaced with scientifically honed ones. And
programs based on a formalist position suggest possible al-
ternative universal primitives (such as feel, good,andbad)
and bolster our claim that emotionis a heterogeneous cluster
of events.

CORE AFFECT AS A POINT OF DEPARTURE

Next, we search for primitive entities. One reason that basic
emotions are ill suited to serve as emotion primitives has
been established by research from the basic emotions per-
spective: They are too complex. For example, they typically
consist of separable components (Izard, 1977) and are di-
rected at an object (i.e., one fears, loves, hates, or is angry
withsomething). Oatley and Johnson-Laird (1987) pointed
out that an emotional primitive should be free of this some-
thing (the object) because of the cognitive involvement that
the object implies. Curiously, then, our search for emotional
primitives begins with moods and other simple feelings that
lack an object. In this way, Oatley and Johnson-Laird created
an important new theory based on a categorical perspective.
Here we explore that same approach but from a dimen-
sional perspective. The goal in dimensional studies is to find
what is common to various emotions, moods, and related
states. Methods have included multivariate analyses of self-
reported feelings, introspection, the semantic differential,
and various biological techniques. This research has regu-
larly found such broad dimensions as pleasure-displeasure
and activation-deactivation. We refer to any state that can be
defined simply as some combination of these two dimensions
ascore affect.

Core affect is similar to Thayer’s (1986) activation, Watson

and Tellegen’s (1985) affect, and Morris’s (1989) mood; it is

also translatable into the everyday termfeeling. In its most

primitive form, core affect is free-floating. That is, it lacks

an object. For example, one can feel anxious (unpleasant acti-

vation) about nothing in particular and without knowing why

one feels that way. Core affect thus fits the ontological re-

quirements for a primitive, elemental, and simple emotional

ingredient. Biological research has often found that the most

basic levels of emotional behavior are better conceptualized

as dimensions than as discrete emotions (Cabanac 1990;

Caccioppo, Gardner, & Berntson, 1999; Davidson, 1992a,

1992b; Gray, 1994; Lang, 1979; Rozin, 1999; Shizgal &

Conover, 1996; Thayer, 1996). For example, in their review of

studies on the peripheral physio-logical changes in emotion,

Cacioppo, Berntson, Larsen, Poehlmann, & Ito, (2000) em-

phasized the existence of a primitive and fast response catego-

rizing stimuli as hospitable or hostile (see also Carver, 2001).

More formally, core affect is that neurophysiological state

consciously accessible as the simplest raw feelings evident in

(but not limited to) moods and emotions, such as feeling

good or bad, energized or enervated. In line with nominalist

ideas, core affect does not correspond with any word in a nat-

ural language ( just as the physicist’s concept of force cannot

be easily translated into lay terms). Core affect consists

of all possible combinations of pleasure-displeasure and

activation-deactivation and therefore includes states that

would not be called emotions, such as calm, fatigue, or

drowsiness. Indeed, a person is always in some state of core

affect, which can be extreme, mild, or even neutral. Core af-

fect is part of most psychological processes.

Specifically, core affect is one part of those events people

callemotion(and which we call emotional episodes). Self-

reports of emotion persistently yield two large general factors

interpretable as pleasure and arousal (e.g., Russell &

Mehrabian, 1977; Watson & Clark, 1992). Furthermore, the

manipulation of arousal by drugs influences self-reported

discrete emotions (Cooper, Zanna, & Taves, 1978; Gerdes,

1979; Schachter & Latané, 1964; Schachter & Wheeler,

1962). Feldman Barrett and Russell (2000) explored this

hypothesis further in a study of self-reported emotions. In

one condition participants were asked to describe how they

currently felt. In a second condition they were asked to search

their memory for the very last time they had an emotion. In

the third condition they were asked to search their memories

for a strong, clear emotion. In all three conditions the plea-

sure and arousal dimensions accounted for substantial

variance in the intensity of self-reported emotions. However,

as the event to be described became more restricted to clearer

and stronger cases of emotion, the amount of variance

Ontological:

Pre-emotional primitives

that are not necessarily

“emotion.”

Conceptualist:

The pre-emotional primitive

is manifested in events. The

experience of these events

gives rise to categories such

as “emotion.”

Nominalist:

Events are unique and

constitute the ground of

everyday knowledge about

emotion.

Formal:

People’s talk about emotions

can be deconstructed into

concepts that allude to

emotional primitives.

Figure 12.1 Four research programs on emotion.