Affect, in psychology, refers to the underlying experience of feeling, emotion, attachment, or mood. In psychology, "affect" refers to the experience of feeling or emotion. It encompasses a wide range of emotional states and can be positive or negative. Affect is a fundamental aspect of human experience and plays a central role in many psychological theories and studies. It can be understood as a combination of three components: emotion, mood, and affectivity. In psychology, the term "affect" is often used interchangeably with several related terms and concepts, though each term may have slightly different nuances. These terms encompass: emotion, feeling, mood, emotional state, sentiment, affective state, emotional response, affective reactivity, disposition. Researchers and psychologists may employ specific terms based on their focus and the context of their work.
Michael I. Posner is an American psychologist who is a researcher in the field of attention, and the editor of numerous cognitive and neuroscience compilations. He is emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, and an adjunct professor at the Weill Medical College in New York. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Posner as the 56th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
Mahzarin Rustum Banaji FBA is an American psychologist of Indian origin at Harvard University, known for her work popularizing the concept of implicit bias in regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, and other factors.
The theory of constructed emotion is a theory in affective science proposed by Lisa Feldman Barrett to explain the experience and perception of emotion. The theory posits that instances of emotion are constructed predictively by the brain in the moment as needed. It draws from social construction, psychological construction, and neuroconstruction.
Michael Inzlicht is professor of psychology at the University of Toronto recognized in the areas of social psychology and neuroscience. Although he has published papers on the topics of prejudice, academic performance, and religion, his most recent interests have been in the topics of self-control, where he borrows methods from affective and cognitive neuroscience to understand the underlying nature of self-control, including how it is driven by motivation.
John Terrence Cacioppo was the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He founded the University of Chicago Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience and was the director of the Arete Initiative of the Office of the Vice President for Research and National Laboratories at the University of Chicago. He co-founded the field of social neuroscience and was member of the department of psychology, department of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience, and the college until his death in March 2018.
Gary Berntson is an emeritus professor at Ohio State University with appointments in the departments of psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics. He is an expert in psychophysiology, neuroscience, biological psychology, and with his colleague John Cacioppo, a founding father of social neuroscience. His research attempts to elucidate the functional organization of brain mechanisms underlying behavioral and affective processes, with a special emphasis on social cognition.
Patricia Katherine Kuhl is a Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences and co-director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington. She specializes in language acquisition and the neural bases of language, and she has also conducted research on language development in autism and computer speech recognition. Kuhl currently serves as an associate editor for the journals Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Neuroscience, and Developmental Science.
Nora S. Newcombe is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology and the James H. Glackin Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Temple University. She is a Canadian-American researcher in cognitive development, cognitive psychology and cognitive science, and expert on the development of spatial thinking and reasoning and episodic memory. She was the principal investigator of the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (2006-2018), one of six Science of Learning Centers funded by the National Science Foundation.
Naomi I. Eisenberger is a social psychologist known for her research on the neural basis of social pain and social connection. She is professor of social psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she directs the Social and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory and co-directs the Social Cognitive Science laboratory.
Elizabeth Anya Phelps is the Pershing Square Professor of Human Neuroscience at Harvard University in the Department of Psychology. She is a cognitive neuroscientist known for her research at the intersection of memory, learning, and emotion. She was the recipient of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society Distinguished Scholar Award and the 21st Century Scientist Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, as well as other honors and awards in her field. Phelps was honored with the 2018 Thomas William Salmon Lecture and Medal in Psychiatry at the New York Academy of Medicine. She received the 2019 William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science (APS) which acknowledged how her "multidisciplinary body of research has probed the influence of emotion across cognitive and behavioral domains using novel imaging techniques and neuropsychological studies grounded in animal models of learning."
Batja Mesquita is a Dutch social psychologist, a cultural psychologist and an affective scientist. She is a professor of psychology at the University of Leuven, Belgium, where she studies the role of culture in emotions, and of emotions in culture and society. She is director of the Center for Social and Cultural Psychology in Leuven.
Eliza Bliss-Moreau is a core scientist in the Neuroscience and Behaviour Unit at the California National Primate Research Center and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. Her work focuses on the biology of emotions in humans and animals, and since the Zika virus epidemic she has been studying the effects of the virus on the developing brain.
Adriana Galván is an American psychologist and expert on adolescent brain development. She is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she directs the Developmental Neuroscience laboratory. She was appointed the Jeffrey Wenzel Term Chair in Behavioral Neuroscience and the Dean of Undergraduate Education at UCLA.
Kristen A. Lindquist is a psychologist and affective neuroscientist whose research focuses on language, emotions, and culture. Lindquist is known for her work on emotion words, suggesting that when speakers of different languages talk about common emotions like love, they may not mean the same thing. Her findings run counter to the view that there are universal emotions that are experienced the same across cultures. Lindquist is Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Director of Carolina Affective Science Lab at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Leah H. Somerville is an American psychologist who is a professor at Harvard University. She is a member of the Human Connectome Project. Somerville was awarded the 2022 National Academy of Sciences Troland Research Award.
Patricia Ann Reuter-Lorenz is an American psychologist who is the Michael I. Posner Collegiate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan. Reuter-Lorenz is Chair of the School of Psychology and researches the cognitive mechanisms of attention. She was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Aikaterini Fotopoulou is a psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist who is a professor at the University College London Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology. She is the co-founder and Treasurer of the International Association for the Study of Affective Touch and the President-Elect of the European Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Society. She is also a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and past co-chair of its International Convention, and the past President of the Psychology Section of the British Science Association. Fotopoulou was the past Director of the London Neuropsychoanalysis Centre, Secretary of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society and coordinator of the London Neuropsychoanalysis Group.
Nim Tottenham is a professor of psychology at Columbia University, where she leads the Developmental Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. Her research highlighted fundamental changes in amygdala-prefrontal cortex circuitry across childhood and adolescence and the influential role of early experiences on the developmental trajectories of these circuits.
Tamlin S. Conner, also known as Tamlin Conner Christensen, is an American–New Zealand academic psychologist, and is a full professor at the University of Otago, specialising in researching the science of wellbeing and happiness.
