Experimental Research About The Reasonable Existence Of Core Affect

There already have hot disputes about affect during the first decades of the twentieth century. For instance, there was debate over whether affect was more like a sensation or like a mental feeling; and the question of whether affect is distinct from emotion. Most writers favored that affect is not a sensation on the grounds that it cannot be parsed and analyzed as distinct modalities like vision and audition, and that is not a distinct sensory modality because it is derived from "diffuse organic sensations". For some writers, affect is a state of mind that occurs in response to emotion—it is unpleasant to be angry or sad or afraid and pleasant to be excited or happy or tranquil. According that, both sensations and emotions inspire affective feelings (that are pleasant or unpleasant). And then Wundt argued that affect is a direct (uninterpreted), psychologically primitive (psychologically irreducible) experience, as the "affective tone of a sensation". This affective tone was core affect which is a pre-prepare state before discrete emotion. Core affect was a modern Wundtian view divided from dimensional emotion theory. Prior to primary emotions, it was a primary state rooted in basic-level consciousness, together constituted the stream of consciousness with perceptual, cognitive as well as behavioral process, then it gradually extended to certain emotion over time. Core affect theory explored some field beyond "emotions" and claimed the psychological construction of emotion. It suggested that emotion was not one process but an umbrella term for the various processesPurpose:At the present-time, the investigation of core affect is still lacking at home, and this article major demonstrates the reasonable existence of core affect by two experimental researches. On the one hand, see from theoretical establishment, we explore the two dimensional structure of core affect, that is the reasonable existence of valence and arousal, as well as compared with the affective circumplex; on the other hand, see from reaction time, we work at finding out the difference between core affect and discrete emotion, then indirectly prove the reasonable existence of core affect.Process and methods:We firstly establish an emotional picture bank through standardization; secondly, explore the structure of core affect through analyzing the affective state evaluated by participants when emotional pictures are present; thirdly, track the process from core affect to discrete emotion with the benefit of reaction time, simultaneously consider the differences between the two. The methods of Data analysis are exploratory factor analysis, t examination and so on.Results:Dimensional data analysis shows that, the Cronbach alpha coefficient of the scale used to explore the structure of core affect is more than.85, the variance of ANOVA is 62.107%, and the Component Plot in rotated space is basically tallies with the affective circumplex of Russell; the alpha coefficient of the total scale is.816, both subscales have good internal consistency, the coefficient is respectively.926 and.743; in addition, the difference between Normal College Students and Engineering College Students is statistically significant. Data analysis of reaction time shows that, the times taken by core affect are evidently shorter than that taken by discrete emotions, but the gender differences are not statistically significant; the times taken by core affect induced by variable emotional material, and there is significantly difference between the times taken by positive emotion and by negative emotion. As a whole, the results of experiments are generally corresponded with the preliminary theoretical conception.