AFFECTION, AFFECTIVE PROCESSES (Lat. affeetio, a state of mind produced by some influence, from affieere, to do something to one, ad, to + facere, to do). For many centuries psychologists have discussed the phenomena of the human mind under the three headings of intellect. Feeling, and Will. (See PSYCHOLOGY.) One of the chief aims of modern psychology is to analyze these great mental functions into their simplest component processes, and so finally to reach the mental elements, the ultimate and irreducible constituents of mind. The various forms of intellectual experience (perception, idea, association of ideas, etc.) reduce, on such analysis, to the sensation (q.v.) ; the various forms of feeling (emotion, passion, mood) to the affection; while the simplest will-processes are found to contain both sensational and affective elements.
Affection, then, is the mental element which characterizes all varieties of our emotional life. It is the last result of the analysis of joy and sorrow, love and hate, anger and fear; it forms the common basis of the sense-pleasures of eating and drinking, and of the highest .esthet ic appreciation of music and painting. Like sensation, it is the product of scientific abstrac tion: it is never experienced singly, but always in connection with other processes. And, like sensation, it cannot be reduced to anything sim pler than itself. Many attempts have been made, in the interests of scientific economy, to derive it from sensation, which would then remain as the only mind-stuff, the sole material of which the mind is built; but so far all attempts have failed.
As to the different kinds or "qualities" of affection, modern psychology is divided. Some psychologists maintain that the manifold forme of affective experience are traceable, in the last resort, to the two typical processes of pleasure and pain, or, in the better phraseology—since pain (q.v.) is a sensation, with a definite organ in muscle and skin—to pleasantness and unpleas antness. Relief, despair, bope, satisfaction, anxiety, resentment would then be, in pure feel ing and at any given moment of their course, either simply pleasant or simply unpleasant. There are two principal objections to this view: ( 1 ) that it does not do justice to the immense complexity and variety of the emotions; and (2) that it confuses the lower and the higher, the pleasure of a good dinner with that of Beetho ven's Ninth Symphony. The latter point is very differently taken by different psychologists. One says, e.g., that the unpleasurableness of a tooth ache, of an intellectual failure, and of a tragical experience is so patently diverse that assertions to the contrary require no criticism. Another declares as positively that there is no qualitative difference discoverable between the pleasantness of a color and that of a successfully concluded argument, when careful abstraction is made from the very wide differences in their attendant circumstances. And so the matter rests. The former objection has suggested a more elaborate classification of the affective qualities.
According to this second view, the number of affective qualities is as large as—if not larger than—the number of sensations. We have, it is
true, no names for the great majority of them; but that is because language has been developed, not for the sake of a scientific psychology, but for purposes of practical intercourse, and for all practical purposes the discrimination of the main emotional types (anger. fear, and the rest) has been sufficient. We can, however, distin guish three main trends or directions of the affective consciousness, within each of which a long series of ultimate qualities is ranged be tween opposed extremes. These directions are those of (1) pleasantness - unpleasantness: (2) excitement - depression (tranquilization, inhibi tion) : and (3) tension-relaxation (resolution). The first series of qualities comprises the affec tions of the prepent time: our affective state. as determined by the occurrence of any given moment, is one of pleasure or displeasure. The second series contains all the shades and tints of our affective anticipation of the future; we are aroused or subdued by what is to come. And the third series represents the effects of experi ences just past : we are kept on the stretch, or relieved from our tension, by what. has just hap pened. Or—to put the differences from another point of view—we are pleased or displeased by the characte• of our experience: we are excited or tranquilized, according as it is more or less intensive; and we are held on the strain of ex pectation, or relieved from this strain, according as it lasts a longer or a shorter time. Affections of all three types are, as a rule. combined in the concrete feeling, in "real" affective experience. Suppose. e.g., that one is looking forward to a pleasant event. One has, at first, a feeling of tension, to which are soon added. in feelings of unpleasantness and of excitement. All three affections increase gradually in strength until the expected event occurs. At that moment the unpleasantness changes to pleasantness, and the strain to relaxation, while the excitement is still continued. Presently the excitement dies away. Then the feeling of relax ation or satisfaction fades out: and finally the effect of the event passes off altogether, with the fading of pleasure to its indifference-point, It would seem, then, that expert opinion could hardly be more sharply divided. on the one hand, we have the belief in two and only two affective qualities, homogeneous throughout the affective life: on the other, the suggestion that there are many thousand feelings, each of which is unique in quality. though the whole number fall roughly into three great groups. It should, however, he said that these conflicting views are held tentatively, not dog,matieally. it is gen erally agreed that we do not as yet possess the data for a scientific theory of affection. The appeal lies to experiment : and the application of experimental method in the sphere of feeling is extraordinarily difficult. Nevertheless, the prob lem stands to-day in the forefront of psychologi cal inquiry. and much may be expected from the near future.