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 (Ate = 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. Current affect has been described with various dimensions and structures, including Russell's (1980) circumplex, Watson and Tellegen's (1985) positive and negative affect, Thayer's (1989) tense and energetic arousal, and Larsen and Diener's (1992) eight combinations of pleasantness and activation. In this article, we argue that it is possible to integrate these various concepts in a simple scheme, thereby taking a large step towards unifying dimensional approaches to affect as a person experiences and reports it. There have been three major approaches to the broad, general dimensions of reported affect. One approach has focused on activation (also known as arousal, energy, tension, and activity). Sleep, drowsiness, alertness, activation, hyperactivation, and, finally, frenzied excitement describe increasing degrees of activation. Activation was prominent in psychological writing throughout most of this century (Berlyne, 1960; Cannon, 1927; Duffy, 1957; Hebb, 1955; Lindsley, 1951; Mandler, 1984; Schachter & Singer, 1962; Zillmann, 1983). Thayer (1989, 1996) has spearheaded a research program on the causes and consequences of everyday affect, conceptualized in terms of types and degrees of activation, demonstrating that self-reported activation is related to everything from diet to personality to neurochemistr y.