AFFECTION, literally, a state resulting generally from an external influence. The term was at one time employed to denote the states even of material bodies, but is now confined to certain mental states only, in fact, to certain feelings. It is popularly used of a sentiment between persons amounting to more than good will or friendship. By ethical writers the word has been used generally of distinct states of feeling, both lasting and spasmodic ; some contrast it with "passion," as being free from the distinctively sensual element. More specifically the word has been restricted to emotional states which are in relation to persons. In the former sense, it is the Gr. 7r6.0os, and as such it appears in Descartes and most of the early British ethical writers. On vari ous grounds, however—e.g., that it does not involve anxiety or excitement, that it is comparatively inert and compatible with the entire absence of the sensuous element—it is generally and usefully distinguished from passion. In this narrower sense the word has played a great part in ethical systems, which have spoken of the social or parental "affections" as in some sense a part of moral obligation. For a consideration of these and similar problems, which depend ultimately on the degree in which the affections are regarded as voluntary, see H. Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, pp. In psychology the terms "affection" and "affective" are used for the characteristic quality of experiences that are neither cognitive nor conational. As all intellectual phenomena have by some psychologists been reduced to sensation, so all feeling has been regarded as reducible to simple mental affection, the ele ment of which all emotional manifestations are ultimately com posed. The nature of this element is a problem which has been provisionally, but not conclusively, solved by many psychologists; the method is necessarily experimental, and all experiments on feeling are peculiarly difficult. The solutions proposed are two. In the first, all affective phenomena are primarily divisible into those which are pleasurable and those which are the reverse. The main objections to this are that it does not explain the infinite variety of phenomena, and that it disregards the distinction which most philosophers admit between higher and lower pleasures. The second solution is that every sensation has its specific affective quality, though by reason of the poverty of language many of these have no name. W. Wundt, Outlines of Psychology (trans. C. H. Judd, Leipzig, 1897), maintains that we may group under three main affective directions, each with its negative, all the in finite varieties in question; these are (a) pleasure, or rather pleasantness, and the reverse, (b) tension and relaxation, (c) ex citement and depression.
Two methods of experiment have been tried. The first, intro duced by A. Mosso, the Italian psychologist, consists in recording the physical phenomena which are observed to accompany modi fications of the affective consciousness. Thus it is found that the action of the heart is accelerated by pleasant, and retarded by un pleasant, stimuli; again, changes of weight are found to accom pany modifications of affection—and so on.
The second is Fechner's method; it consists in recording the changes in feeling-tone produced in a subject by bringing him in contact with a series of conditions, objects or stimuli graduated according to a scientific plan and presented singly, in pairs or in groups. The result is a comparative table of likes and dislikes.
(See FEELING.)