ArticlePDF Available

A Circumplex Model of Affect

Authors:
James A Russell at Boston College
James A Russell
Download full-text PDF
Read full-text
Download citation

Abstract

Factor-analytic evidence has led most psychologists to describe affect as a set of dimensions, such as displeasure, distress, depression, excitement, and so on, with each dimension varying independently of the others. However, there is other evidence that rather than being independent, these affective dimensions are interrelated in a highly systematic fashion. The evidence suggests that these interrelationships can be represented by a spatial model in which affective concepts fall in a circle in the following order: pleasure (0), excitement (45), arousal (90), distress (135), displeasure (180), depression (225), sleepiness (270), and relaxation (315). This model was offered both as a way psychologists can represent the structure of affective experience, as assessed through self-report, and as a representation of the cognitive structure that laymen utilize in conceptualizing affect. Supportive evidence was obtained by scaling 28 emotion-denoting adjectives in 4 different ways: R. T. Ross's (1938) technique for a circular ordering of variables, a multidimensional scaling procedure based on perceived similarity among the terms, a unidimensional scaling on hypothesized pleasure–displeasure and degree-of-arousal dimensions, and a principal-components analysis of 343 Ss' self-reports of their current affective states. (70 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Content uploaded by James A Russell
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by James A Russell on Dec 20, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of this full-text is provided by American Psychological Association.
Learn more
Content available from Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
This content is subject to copyright. Terms and conditions apply.
... Traditionally, emotion research has focused on a small number of basic emotion categories (Descartes, 1989;Ekman, 1992). Additionally, emotions have been proposed to exist along dimensions such as arousal (emotional activation) and valence (positive to negative; Russell, 1980). However, recent studies suggest that de-scribing musical emotions requires a richer vocabulary beyond a limited set of terms and is potentially described by a high dimensional space (Cowen, Sauter, Tracy, & Keltner, 2019;Cowen & Keltner, 2021;Eerola & Vuoskoski, 2013;Eerola & Saari, 2025). ...
Are Expressions for Music Emotions the Same Across Cultures?
Preprint
Full-text available
  • Feb 2025
Music evokes profound emotions, yet the universality of emotional descriptors across languages remains debated. A key challenge in cross-cultural research on music emotion is biased stimulus selection and manual curation of taxonomies, predominantly relying on Western music and languages. To address this, we propose a balanced experimental design with nine online experiments in Brazil, the US, and South Korea, involving N=672 participants. First, we sample a balanced set of popular music from these countries. Using an open-ended tagging pipeline, we then gather emotion terms to create culture-specific taxonomies. Finally, using these bottom-up taxonomies, participants rate emotions of each song. This allows us to map emotional similarities within and across cultures. Results show consistency in high arousal, high valence emotions but greater variability in others. Notably, machine translations were often inadequate to capture music-specific meanings. These findings together highlight the need for a domain-sensitive, open-ended, bottom-up emotion elicitation approach to reduce cultural biases in emotion research.
View
... Two further music characteristics relevant for its effectiveness regarding stress relief are valence and arousal. According to the circumplex model of affect 25 , emotions can be arranged on a two-dimensional circular space, with independent axes for valence (pleasure-displeasure) and arousal (activationdeactivation). Emotions vary along these continuous dimensions and can be located within this circle based on their valence and arousal levels. ...
Development and Initial Validation of the Music for Stress Alleviation (MUSA) Playlists
Preprint
Full-text available
  • Feb 2025
The capacity of music to alleviate stress has been the subject of extensive research. Yet, findings from laboratory studies remain inconsistent, which has been linked to heterogeneity of the music stimuli used. To address the need for standardized, pre-tested music stimuli, we developed the Music for Stress Alleviation (MUSA) playlists and conducted an initial validation of their effectiveness. Six playlists were curated for stress reduction, containing instrumental music with a low tempo, low arousal, and neutral to positive valence, and representing various genres (piano, ambient, jazz, lounge, guitar, and lo-fi). Sixty healthy female participants were assigned to one of the six playlists. Pre- and post-listening, we measured participants’ affective states using the Relaxed Positive Affect (RPA) and Safe/Content Positive Affect (SCPA) scales of the Types of Positive Affect Scale, and the Good-Bad and Calm-Nervous dimensions of the Multidimensional Mood State Questionnaire. All playlists led to significantly increased RPA (medium-to-large effect sizes), while a subset also enhanced SCPA, Calm, and Good mood. Participants rated the playlists as highly relaxing. These findings provide initial evidence of the effectiveness of the MUSA playlists for music-induced stress relief. Further studies in larger and stressed samples are needed to confirm and expand on these findings.
View
... The classification of emotions can also be based on dimensions. Russell [26] proposed a continuous space of emotions, a circular model in a two-dimensional space divided by pleasure and arousal, known as the circumplex model of emotion. Arousal is represented on the vertical axis, indicating the degree of emotional activation observed, while pleasure is on the horizontal axis, representing the pleasantness and positivity of the emotion. ...
How Do Humans Recognize the Motion Arousal of Non-Humanoid Robots?
Article
Full-text available
  • Feb 2025
As non-humanoid robots develop and become more involved in human life, emotional communication between humans and robots will become more common. Non-verbal communication, especially through body movements, plays a significant role in human–robot interaction. To enable non-humanoid robots to express a richer range of emotions, it is crucial to understand how humans recognize the emotional movements of robots. This study focuses on the underlying mechanisms by which humans perceive the motion arousal levels of non-humanoid robots. It proposes a general hypothesis: Human recognition of a robot’s emotional movements is based on the perception of overall motion, and is independent of the robot’s mechanical appearance. Based on physical motion constraints, non-humanoid robots are divided into two categories: those guided by inverse kinematics (IK) constraints and those guided by forward kinematics (FK) constraints. Through literature analysis, it is suggested that motion amplitude has the potential to be a common influencing factor. Two psychological measurement experiments combined with the PAD scale were conducted to analyze the subjects’ perception of the arousal expression effects of different types of non-humanoid robots at various motion amplitudes. The results show that amplitude can be used for expressing arousal across different types of non-humanoid robots. Additionally, for non-humanoid robots guided by FK constraints, the end position also has a certain impact. This validates the overall hypothesis of the paper. The expression patterns of emotional arousal through motion amplitude are roughly the same across different robots: the degree of motion amplitude corresponds closely to the degree of arousal. This research helps expand the boundaries of knowledge, uncover user cognitive patterns, and enhance the efficiency of expressing arousal in non-humanoid robots.
View
... 297). Similarly, many analyses of the so-called affect circumplex (Russell, 1980) also testify to the hypothesis that people are chronically engaged in ascertaining the goodness or badness of stimuli in their environments. Good-bad evaluations, often referred to as a valence dimension that runs from unpleasant to pleasant, are typically found to be more dominant than arousal, which is the other major dimension in the affect circumplex (Barrett, 1995;Lang, 1995). ...
A World of Values
Chapter
Full-text available
  • Feb 2025
This chapter briefly introduces the humanistic theory of wellbeing (HTW), which suggests that a life is good to the extent that it allows us to perform our humanness well. More concretely, our humanness is well performed when three universal human needs are satisfied. They are the need for stability, the need for change, and the need to and for care. The term humanness is also embedded in a normative framework, referred to as basic humanistic values. The premise of the HTW is that all living organisms care about how they are faring in life. Many species also care about how others are faring. This fundamental ability to care originates in a valuation mechanism that constitutes the biological cornerstone of wellbeing. The valuation mechanism explains why and how humans evaluate their lives and the lives of those around them. Valuations operate in different forms; some are quick, automatized, and controlled by System 1 thinking. Others are reflective and controlled by System 2 thinking. The psychology of goodness and badness, including central concepts in positive psychology, is reviewed with regard to these valuation mechanisms. The normative study of values has traditionally been the business of philosophy, which often distinguishes between prudential goodness and moral goodness. Something is prudentially good if it is valuable for the person whose life it is, whereas something is morally good if respecting others is explicitly valued. The chapter asks whether this distinction is too rigid and based on a tradition that erroneously favors the rational and competitive rather than the relational and cooperative attributes of human nature. The HTW is a normative theory. With reference to feminist epistemologies, it argues that a value-based wellbeing theory can be justified by means of scientific reasoning. Basically, the argument draws on the insight that scientific hypotheses cannot be directly confirmed by empirical observations. It is not the relation between a fact and a hypothesis that determines whether the hypothesis is correct; it is background believes held about that relation. Just as epistemic values are scientifically grounded in a consensus about background assumptions, the HTW argues that a moral value also can be accepted as a scientific background assumption. Allowing for the use of normative statements, HTW equates wellbeing with a good life. Wellbeing can be further defined as to like one’s life for the right reasons. To like one’s life means that it feels good and is thought of as good by the person who lives it. The right reason part of the definition is the normative element. This implies that liking one’s life is not a justified indicator of wellbeing if it violates a few, universal, humanistic values. Three values are particularly important: respecting basic human rights, avoiding preventable harm, and accepting an ethics of care. Importantly, an activity need not be aimed at humanistic values to be good, but the activity must be consistent with them. A distinction is made between hedonic wellbeing (HWB) and eudaimonic wellbeing (EWB). HWB means to be well in the sense of spontaneously like one’s life and is associated with fulfilling the need for stability. One major indicator of HWB is harmony feelings such as pleasure, happiness, and tranquility; another is spontaneous life judgments such as life satisfaction and the presence of meaning in life. EWB means to be well in the sense of becoming a better human being and is associated with the need for change. A major indicator of EWB is opportunity feelings such as interest, engagement, immersion, and wonder; another is reflective judgments such as wisdom and morality. The concept of EWB further includes the notion of betterment orientations, having to do with a will to improve and perform salient life tasks with some perfection or elegance. Personal growth, searching for meaning in life, and a will to be a good human being are indicators of the betterment dimension. The need to and for care is feeding into both HWB and EWB.
View
... A set of images was chosen by a team of experts, including a psychologist and a museum specialist, using the Basic Emotions Theory [51,52], representing basic emotions like anger, happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, and disgust since these emotions seem to be globally recognized and expressed. In addition, these emotions are a combination of positive and negative ones as they are recognized as the primary emotion categories from the Circumplex Model of Affect [53,54]. ...
Virtual Cultural Experiences for the Elderly: Formative Studies and First Findings Regarding Cultural Content
Article
Full-text available
  • Feb 2025
In societies with aging populations, the active participation of elders in all aspects of societal life is crucial. Cultural heritage provides a rich vehicle for engaging elders, stimulating both cognitive and affective responses, and keeping human brains active. This study focused on gathering requirements for creating content for virtual cultural experiences. Specifically, participants were shown various images and a film, and their self-reported thoughts and emotions were collected. The images were chosen by experts for the specific emotions they could trigger. The same images were analyzed with sentiment analysis software and finally given to the elders to express their emotions. The results of sentiment analysis, the analysis of experts, and the data from the participants were compared, showing differences between the perceived emotions. Regarding the historical film, the participants discussed the main emotions they experienced. The results were analyzed to extract guidelines for the content creation of VR applications.
View
View
Harnessing Empathy: The Power of Emotional Resonance in Live Streaming Sales and the Moderating Magic of Product Type
Article
  • Feb 2025
The emotional expressions in live streaming e-commerce possess a strong contagious effect, enabling viewers to easily resonate with the specific emotions conveyed by the streamers and consciously build an empathy transmission chain. This study constructs a regression model based on the emotional contagion theory and explores the impact of empathy between streamers and viewers on sales performance. Using data from 30 live streams, totaling 22,707 min, from one of China’s most popular live streaming rooms, “East Buy”, between February and April 2024, we demonstrate the significant positive impact of empathy between streamers and viewers on sales. Additionally, product type positively moderates this relationship. The unexpected thing is that live streaming time does not significantly affect the relationship between empathy and sales. This study employs text sentiment analysis methods to extract emotional features from the streamers’ speech and real-time comments from viewers. Our research extends the application of emotional contagion theory to the context of live-streaming e-commerce, enriches the literature on emotional interaction in service marketing, and provides practical insights for live-streaming platforms and streamers. Streamers can optimize marketing strategies and achieve sales goals by creating a more engaging and empathetic live-streaming experience.
View
View
View
Evaluating video game moods and their separability based on user-generated reviews
Article
  • Feb 2025
Purpose The aboutness (a subject matter of resource) of information has been strongly emphasized when organizing and searching for different types of media resources. For video games, mood is one of the critical subjective elements that supports users in finding games of interest. The current study examines a previously developed video game mood controlled vocabulary (CV) to empirically test its applicability and evaluate the individual terms’ separability and distinctiveness. Design/methodology/approach The research team collected user reviews from Steam, an online game database. Three different games were selected for triangulation to represent each of the 17 moods identified in the existing CV, resulting in the selection of 51 games. Collected reviews were tokenized and investigated from individual, terminological and categorical levels of text analyses. Findings Through the application of multiple analysis techniques (frequency, cluster and network), findings confirm the intuitiveness and usefulness of the existing CV. Additionally, opportunities for increased category separability and distinctness are identified for three moods: Aggressive, Quirky and Intense. Originality/value The current study adopts a user-centered perspective to evaluate the existing metadata framework created based on literature analysis. This study aims to complement the literature-based framework with users’ perspectives to enhance the metadata for interactive multimedia resources, such as video games.
View
View
View
Reliabilities and Validities of the Mood Questionnaire
Article
  • Aug 1974
Scales were constructed for a 40-item mood questionnaire administered to a sample of 1140 Navy recruits. The questionnaire was shown to be similar to others in content and reliabilities. Construct, concurrent and predictive validities of the scales with several criteria in a number of testing situations are also presented. The findings emphasize the usefulness of this questionnaire as a criterion measure or as a predictor of objective behavioral criteria under field-testing conditions.
View
View
View
Measurement of Activation Through Self Report
Article
  • Apr 1967
While activation has proved to be a very useful concept in understanding behavior, theoretical and practical problems concerning physiological measurement have reduced its utility. Controlled self-report is suggested as an alternative measurement form, and data from several studies are presented indicating the validity of the Activation-Deactivation Adjective Check List (AD-ACL), an objective self-report measure of transient levels of activation. Factor analytic studies yielded four AD-ACL factors representing different points on a hypothetical continuum. These factors correlated substantially with physiological variables and reflected significant activation changes as predicted from diurnal sleep-wakefulness variations and from an impending college examination. The relative merits of self-report and individual peripheral physiological measures in the assessment of activation are discussed.
View
Negative Similarities
Article
  • Dec 1975
  • EDUC PSYCHOL MEAS
Two experiments were carried out for the present investigation. The first experiment was an exact replication of an experiment by Ekman (1955), where the subjects had been requested to estimate positive similarity between pairs of emotional terms. The second experiment was carried out in the same way except that the subjects were also requested to give negative estimations when they considered that a pair of words described feelings which were opposite to each other. Using factor analysis it was found that the negative estimations obtained in the second experiment were represented as zero ratings in the first one. The second experiment also yielded some additional information which was considered to be psychologically meaningful. A reanalysis of Ekman's data (1955) gave almost exactly the same result as the first experiment in the present study.
View
Simultaneous Processing Of Multiple Stimulus Dimensions Among Paranoid And Nonparanoid Schizophrenics
Article
  • Oct 1976
In the first study, paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenics and normals made dichotamous conceptual judgments about multidimensional visual stimuli. While the schizophrenics were not significantly inferior with respect to efficiency in multidimensional stimulus combination and did not display abnormal patterns of dimensional combination, they were less sensitive to interstimulus variation in the relevant attributes. In the second study, subjects performed judgments of multidimensional similarity among verbal stimuli. Results indicated the several semantic dimensions of variation to be no less "accessable" to the schizophrenics when considered individually, but that these subject, especially those classified as paranoid, were less effective in combining the dimensions for multidimensional judgments. Discussion centered on theoretical reasons for deficit with the verbal stimuli and the nature of the semantic dimensions involved.
View
A statistic for circular series
Article
  • Jan 1938
  • J EDUC PSYCHOL
The problem of the circular scale is defined and the difficulties of transformation to linear scales are discussed. A vectorial method of solution is presented which gives a measure of central tendency and a measure of precision in terms of the vectorial angle and scalar magnitude. The criteria of "continuity' and "opposition' in circular scale construction are pointed out and discussed.
View
View