On the Broad Applicability of the Affective Circumplex

Studies of affective experience are guided by the assumption that the structure of affect generalizes across people. Yet this assumption has not been tested among educationally and economically diverse community residents or among individuals with psychopathology. This study explicitly examined the broad applicability of the valence-arousal circumplex and whether schizophrenia patients and nonpatients have comparable knowledge structures of affective phenomena. Patients and nonpatients completed similarity ratings of 120 pairs of affect words. Similarity judgments were analyzed separately for each group using a multidimensional scaling procedure, and solutions were compared. Results revealed the same two-dimensional valence-arousal solution for schizophrenia patients and nonpatients, although there were subtle differences between the groups. These findings provide additional evidence that the circumplex model is a useful formalism for representing affective phenomena across diverse populations, and they bolster confidence in existing interpretations of schizophrenia patients' reports of affective experience.

[1]  A. Kring,et al.  Nonverbal Behavior in Schizophrenia , 2003 .

[2]  Pierre Philippot,et al.  Nonverbal Behavior in Clinical Settings , 2003 .

[3]  L. F. Barrett,et al.  Mental representations of affect knowledge , 2001 .

[4]  N. Remmington,et al.  Reexamining the circumplex model of affect. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[5]  J. Bachorowski,et al.  Emotions and Psychopathology , 1999 .

[6]  A. Kring,et al.  Stability of emotional responding in schizophrenia , 1999 .

[7]  J. Russell,et al.  Core affect, prototypical emotional episodes, and other things called emotion: dissecting the elephant. , 1999, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[8]  J. Cacioppo,et al.  The affect system has parallel and integrative processing components: Form follows function. , 1999 .

[9]  L. F. Barrett.  Discrete Emotions or Dimensions? The Role of Valence Focus and Arousal Focus , 1998 .

[10]  J. Russell,et al.  Independence and bipolarity in the structure of current affect. , 1998 .

[11]  A. Kring,et al.  More evidence for generalized poor performance in facial emotion perception in schizophrenia. , 1996, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[12]  A. Kring,et al.  Do schizophrenic patients show a disjunctive relationship among expressive, experiential, and psychophysiological components of emotion? , 1996, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[13]  L. Feldman.  Valence Focus and Arousal Focus: Individual Differences in the Structure of Affective Experience , 1995 .

[14]  P. Lang.  The emotion probe. Studies of motivation and attention. , 1995, The American psychologist.

[15]  Dc Washington.  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Ed. , 1994 .

[16]  H. Berenbaum,et al.  Emotional experience and expression in schizophrenia and depression. , 1992, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[17]  Wayne S. DeSarbo,et al.  Three-way scaling and clustering. , 1988 .

[18]  D. Watson,et al.  Toward a consensual structure of mood. , 1985, Psychological bulletin.

[19]  J. Russell.  A circumplex model of affect. , 1980 .

[20]  R N Shepard,et al.  Multidimensional Scaling, Tree-Fitting, and Clustering , 1980, Science.

[21]  Richard R. Lau,et al.  Attributions in the Sports Pages , 1980 .

[22]  Forrest W. Young,et al.  Nonmetric individual differences multidimensional scaling: An alternating least squares method with optimal scaling features , 1977 .

[23]  R. Neufeld.  Simultaneous Processing Of Multiple Stimulus Dimensions Among Paranoid And Nonparanoid Schizophrenics. , 1976, Multivariate behavioral research.

[24]  L. J. Chapman,et al.  Schizophrenic reasoning about affect-laden material. , 1975, Archives of general psychiatry.

[25]  R. Neufeld.  A multidimensional scaling analysis of schizophrenics' and normals' perceptions of verbal similarity. , 1975, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[26]  R. Shepard.  Representation of structure in similarity data: Problems and prospects , 1974 .

[27]  L. J. Chapman,et al.  Schizophrenic response to affectivity in word definition. , 1974, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[28]  L. E. Bush.  Individual differences multidemensional scaling of adjectives denoting feelings. , 1973, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[29]  J. Chang,et al.  Analysis of individual differences in multidimensional scaling via an n-way generalization of “Eckart-Young” decomposition , 1970 .

[30]  S. Epstein,et al.  Thematic and cognitive responses of good premorbid schizophrenics to cues of nurturance and rejection. , 1963, Journal of consulting psychology.

[31]  R. Shepard.  The analysis of proximities: Multidimensional scaling with an unknown distance function. II , 1962 .

[32]  R. Shepard.  The analysis of proximities: Multidimensional scaling with an unknown distance function. I. , 1962 .

[33]  J. M. Kittross.  The measurement of meaning , 1959 .

[34]  María G. Cisneros-Solís,et al.  MEDICAL ANNUAL , 1958, Journal of The Royal Naval Medical Service.