AFFECTIVE DIMENSION OF THE HUMAN BEING: MAIN COMPONENTS - PSYCHOLOGY - 2025

The affective dimension of the human being is the area of ​​people's lives that has to do with emotions, moods and, in general, with the subjective experience of each person. Formerly the term was used as a synonym for one of the three main mental functions, the other two being cognition and volition.

Cognition is the ability to think rationally and logically, while volition is motivation and the ability to act according to logic. For many years psychology defended that the affective dimension of the human being was not especially important, and that it was better to focus attention on rationality or behavior.

However, later research in psychology and neuroscience have made it possible to distinguish that emotions affect both thoughts and behavior. For this reason, interest in the affective dimension has soared again today, emerging disciplines as popular as emotional intelligence.

What is affection?

Within the field of psychology, affect is a term that is used to talk about feelings and emotions, and those fields related to them. In general, affect is defined as the response that is elicited in an organism when it interacts with a stimulus, which can be both external and internal.

In modern psychology it is considered that affect is closely related to behavior and cognition, in such a way that in most modern clinical approaches it is considered that one of the elements cannot be changed without affecting the other two.

Main components of the affective dimension

The study of emotions is also valuable in itself; and several researchers have focused on finding out what its components are. Most modern currents of psychology defend the existence of three main factors that influence emotions: valence, arousal and motivational intensity.

Other researchers, especially those closest to social theories, speak of a fourth dimension called attribution.

Valencia

Valencia is the component of an emotion that tells us if it is a pleasant or "good" feeling, or if on the contrary it is unpleasant or "bad". If it is a pleasant emotion, we usually speak of positive valence, and if it is unpleasant, we speak of negative valence.

This dimension of affect does not allow to distinguish between different positive or negative emotions. Thus, within the negative valence emotions we can find some as disparate as disgust, sadness or fear; and the positive ones include love, pride or joy.

Arousal

Arousal refers to the ability of an emotion to "activate" us or produce a response in us. The greater arousal an emotion provokes, the more intensely we will feel it.

For example, before an appetizing plate of food, our arousal will be much greater if we are hungry than if we have just satiated ourselves at a banquet. All emotions can also be measured in terms of their arousal, which is independent of their valence.

If an emotion is unable to overcome a minimum level of arousal, our conscious mind will not register it; in this way, we can feel some emotions without realizing it. This is so because our subconscious mind is capable of processing a much greater amount of information than the conscious one.

The brain structure responsible for bringing our conscious attention to emotions with sufficient arousal is the ascending reticular activating system (also known as SARA).

It is a set of parts of the brain in charge of directing our consciousness and our attention to the events and situations that it considers relevant.

Motivational intensity

The third affective dimension of emotions is motivational intensity; that is to say, the strength of the desire that provokes in us to act.

All emotions activate in the human being a response known as "fight or flight". In general, due to the way in which our affective dimension has evolved, emotions drive us to act.

This need for action can be moving us towards what has caused the feeling (in the case of positive emotions), or away from it if it is a negative emotion.

The greater the motivational intensity caused by an emotion, the greater the need to act that we will have in relation to the object that generated it for us.

A third possible response to an event that causes us a feeling is paralysis. Sometimes, when an emotion is too strong and we are not clear about the action plan to follow, an adverse effect can occur and our instinctive response is to stand still.

This is what happens, for example, in the case of deer that are "frozen" in front of the headlights of a car.

Attribution

Some of the most modern theories about the affective dimension of the human being speak of a fourth component of emotions: attribution. According to the researchers who defend them, when we perceive an emotion in us we have to look for a cause to which we attribute our activation.

That is, when our SARA makes us realize that we are "activated", our conscious mind begins to analyze our environment and our own thoughts in search of a stimulus that could have caused us that emotion.

In many occasions, during the first moments before finding a cause for our feelings, we are not even able to distinguish the valence of the emotion (that is, if it is something positive or negative). We can only realize that we are more activated than normal.

Experiment that validates attribution

The most famous experiment that seems to confirm the existence of this dimension of emotions is the “study of the two bridges”.

In this experiment, two groups of men had to cross two bridges to reach a researcher, who was going to pass them a questionnaire. After filling it out, the woman gave them her number and asked them to call her if they had any questions.

The only difference between the two groups of men was the height of the bridge they had to cross. While in the first group the bridge was very low and offered quite a bit of security, in the second group the bridge hung high and seemed much less secure. Therefore, men in the second group would feel more arousal.

According to the hypothesis of the researchers, the men in the second group would attribute this greater activation to the attractiveness of the woman, so they would feel more attracted to her and would call her more times after the study. Once the results were compiled, it could be seen that the hypothesis was indeed fulfilled.

References

1. "The Two - Factor Theory of Emotion" in: Very Well Mind. Retrieved on: February 20, 2018 from Very Well Mind: verywellmind.com.
2. "Valence, Arousal, and How to Kindle an Emotional Fire" in: Conversion XL. Retrieved on: February 20, 2018 from Conversion XL: conversionxl.com.
3. "Affect (psychology)" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: February 20, 2018 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.
4. "Affective dimension of human life" in: Claretian Formation. Retrieved on: February 20, 2018 from Claretian Formation: claretianformation.com.
5. "Arousal" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: February 20, 2018 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.