Emotion 2013, Vol. 13, No. 6, 997–998
© 2013 American Psychological Association 1528-3542/13/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0034512
COMMENTARY
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
The Emerging Field of Affective Science James J. Gross
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Stanford University
Northeastern University
One of the defining events in 20th century psychology was the birth of cognitive science, an interdisciplinary field focused on the many faces of cognition (Bruner, 1990). Today, a parallel process is underway in the affective domain (which includes the study of emotions, moods, preferences, attitudes, value, and stress). We are witnessing the emergence of a new interdisciplinary field, namely the field of affective science. Although an interest in affective processes dates to the earliest days of psychology (e.g., both William James and Wilhelm Wundt viewed affect as a core feature of consciousness), the proximal origins of the field of affective science can be traced to the 1980s. During this period, a group of forward-looking scholars from the social sciences and humanities founded the International Society for Research on Emotion and, at about the same time, the National Institute of Mental Health funded a multiuniversity consortium for postdoctoral training in affective science in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since this time, professional societies across a range of disciplines have played an important role in building interest in affective science. As the number of presentations on affect-related topics has surged, it has become possible to attend virtually any major scientific conference in psychology and find something new on affect-related topics. Today, the field of affective science is growing as never before. There have been more publications containing the phrase “affective science” in the past few years than in all prior years combined (see Figure 1). The importance accorded to this field is evidenced by the attention it is now receiving in our field’s highest tier journals, most notably right here in the pages of Emotion (founded in 2001), as well as in the several dozen recent volumes on affective science, not to mention the growing number of journals dedicated to research in affective science (including, in the last few years, Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, Emotion Review, and Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience). Affective science is now a formally designated area of study in our own psychology departments, and many more departments are likely to follow suit. The translational significance of research in affective science is also clear. For example, affective science is prominent in the National Institute of Mental Health’s Research Domain Criteria Project, which seeks to “Develop, for research purposes, new ways of classifying
mental disorders based on dimensions of observable behavior and neurobiologial measures.” Affective science is also central to the National Cancer Institute’s mission to better understand the factors that contribute to cancer control, including the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. A better understanding of the nature of stress and emotion have the potential to attenuate the public health burden of cancer by reducing incidence and mortality and increasing quality of life of cancer patients and survivors. After decades of research, it has become clear that affect is a central feature in almost all phenomena that are labeled “mental” and some that are labeled “physical,” including (among others) the following: most if not all categories of mental illness, health and physical illness, resilience to stress and well-being, immune function, memory, marketing, attitudes, stereotyping and prejudice, interpersonal relationships, verbal communication, negotiation strategies, judgment and decision-making, financial decision making, predicting the future, work motivation, politics, aesthetics, and personality. Affect can serve as the basis for moral judgments of right and wrong. Affect even influences perceptual processing in fundamental ways. As a consequence, affective science represents an opportunity for scientific synthesis and discovery across a variety of phenomena and levels of analysis. To provide an integrated professional home for the emerging field of affective science, the Society for Affective Science (http://societyfor-affective-science.org/) was founded in 2012, and will host its first meeting in April 2014 in Washington DC. This society is dedicated to fostering basic and applied research in the variety of fields that study affect, broadly defined. To achieve this goal, scientific conferences will showcase research drawn from psychology, medicine, neuroscience, computer science, law, economics, anthropology, linguistics, sociology, business, and other related fields. By providing a venue for scientists of all stages of professional development to interact in both formal and informal ways, these meetings are intended to serve as incubators for interdisciplinary collaborations. The guiding premise of this society is that human and nonhuman affective phenomena (including emotions, moods, and other motivated states) transcend traditional disciplinary differences in emphasis and focus, and that a collaboration across disciplinary lines will not only accelerate scientific discoveries and the accumulation of knowledge in a range of topics and fields, but also increase the rate of dissemination of knowledge to scientists, policymakers, and the public alike. More than a century ago, Wilhelm Wundt described affect as a fundamental ingredient of the human mind (Wundt, 1897). We now know he was right. The emerging field of affective science represents an opportunity to consider deep links among a range of psychological
James J. Gross, Department of Psychology, Stanford University; Lisa Feldman Barrett, Department of Psychology, Northeastern University. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to James J. Gross, Department of Psychology, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Building 420, Stanford, CA 94305. E-mail: [email protected] 997
998
GROSS AND FELDMAN BARRETT
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phenomena, and, indeed, may even ultimately provide an avenue for addressing some of psychology’s most intractable quandaries, such as the mind-body problem. As affective science takes root and flourishes, it will provide an integrated framework for understanding a variety of psychological phenomena that long have been studied in isolation from one another. These are exciting times in affective science, and it is very clear that the best is yet to come.
200 150 100
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
50 0
Figure 1. Number of publications containing the exact phrase “affective science” in GOOGLE SCHOLAR from 1990 –2012. Note that this is not a cumulative plot— each point represents the citation count for that single year.
References Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wundt, W. M. (1897). Outlines of psychology. Leipzig, Germany: Engelmann. doi:10.1037/12908-000
Received August 27, 2013 Revision received August 28, 2013 Accepted August 29, 2013 䡲
© 2013 American Psychological Association 1528-3542/13/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0034512
COMMENTARY
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
The Emerging Field of Affective Science James J. Gross
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Stanford University
Northeastern University
One of the defining events in 20th century psychology was the birth of cognitive science, an interdisciplinary field focused on the many faces of cognition (Bruner, 1990). Today, a parallel process is underway in the affective domain (which includes the study of emotions, moods, preferences, attitudes, value, and stress). We are witnessing the emergence of a new interdisciplinary field, namely the field of affective science. Although an interest in affective processes dates to the earliest days of psychology (e.g., both William James and Wilhelm Wundt viewed affect as a core feature of consciousness), the proximal origins of the field of affective science can be traced to the 1980s. During this period, a group of forward-looking scholars from the social sciences and humanities founded the International Society for Research on Emotion and, at about the same time, the National Institute of Mental Health funded a multiuniversity consortium for postdoctoral training in affective science in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since this time, professional societies across a range of disciplines have played an important role in building interest in affective science. As the number of presentations on affect-related topics has surged, it has become possible to attend virtually any major scientific conference in psychology and find something new on affect-related topics. Today, the field of affective science is growing as never before. There have been more publications containing the phrase “affective science” in the past few years than in all prior years combined (see Figure 1). The importance accorded to this field is evidenced by the attention it is now receiving in our field’s highest tier journals, most notably right here in the pages of Emotion (founded in 2001), as well as in the several dozen recent volumes on affective science, not to mention the growing number of journals dedicated to research in affective science (including, in the last few years, Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, Emotion Review, and Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience). Affective science is now a formally designated area of study in our own psychology departments, and many more departments are likely to follow suit. The translational significance of research in affective science is also clear. For example, affective science is prominent in the National Institute of Mental Health’s Research Domain Criteria Project, which seeks to “Develop, for research purposes, new ways of classifying
mental disorders based on dimensions of observable behavior and neurobiologial measures.” Affective science is also central to the National Cancer Institute’s mission to better understand the factors that contribute to cancer control, including the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. A better understanding of the nature of stress and emotion have the potential to attenuate the public health burden of cancer by reducing incidence and mortality and increasing quality of life of cancer patients and survivors. After decades of research, it has become clear that affect is a central feature in almost all phenomena that are labeled “mental” and some that are labeled “physical,” including (among others) the following: most if not all categories of mental illness, health and physical illness, resilience to stress and well-being, immune function, memory, marketing, attitudes, stereotyping and prejudice, interpersonal relationships, verbal communication, negotiation strategies, judgment and decision-making, financial decision making, predicting the future, work motivation, politics, aesthetics, and personality. Affect can serve as the basis for moral judgments of right and wrong. Affect even influences perceptual processing in fundamental ways. As a consequence, affective science represents an opportunity for scientific synthesis and discovery across a variety of phenomena and levels of analysis. To provide an integrated professional home for the emerging field of affective science, the Society for Affective Science (http://societyfor-affective-science.org/) was founded in 2012, and will host its first meeting in April 2014 in Washington DC. This society is dedicated to fostering basic and applied research in the variety of fields that study affect, broadly defined. To achieve this goal, scientific conferences will showcase research drawn from psychology, medicine, neuroscience, computer science, law, economics, anthropology, linguistics, sociology, business, and other related fields. By providing a venue for scientists of all stages of professional development to interact in both formal and informal ways, these meetings are intended to serve as incubators for interdisciplinary collaborations. The guiding premise of this society is that human and nonhuman affective phenomena (including emotions, moods, and other motivated states) transcend traditional disciplinary differences in emphasis and focus, and that a collaboration across disciplinary lines will not only accelerate scientific discoveries and the accumulation of knowledge in a range of topics and fields, but also increase the rate of dissemination of knowledge to scientists, policymakers, and the public alike. More than a century ago, Wilhelm Wundt described affect as a fundamental ingredient of the human mind (Wundt, 1897). We now know he was right. The emerging field of affective science represents an opportunity to consider deep links among a range of psychological
James J. Gross, Department of Psychology, Stanford University; Lisa Feldman Barrett, Department of Psychology, Northeastern University. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to James J. Gross, Department of Psychology, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Building 420, Stanford, CA 94305. E-mail: [email protected] 997
998
GROSS AND FELDMAN BARRETT
450 400 350 300 250
phenomena, and, indeed, may even ultimately provide an avenue for addressing some of psychology’s most intractable quandaries, such as the mind-body problem. As affective science takes root and flourishes, it will provide an integrated framework for understanding a variety of psychological phenomena that long have been studied in isolation from one another. These are exciting times in affective science, and it is very clear that the best is yet to come.
200 150 100
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
50 0
Figure 1. Number of publications containing the exact phrase “affective science” in GOOGLE SCHOLAR from 1990 –2012. Note that this is not a cumulative plot— each point represents the citation count for that single year.
References Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wundt, W. M. (1897). Outlines of psychology. Leipzig, Germany: Engelmann. doi:10.1037/12908-000
Received August 27, 2013 Revision received August 28, 2013 Accepted August 29, 2013 䡲
