Affection or
fondness is a "disposition or rare state of mind or body" that is often associated with a feeling or type of
loveLove is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
. It has given rise to a number of branches of
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and
psychologyPsychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
concerning: emotion (popularly: love, devotion etc.); disease; influence; state of being (philosophy); and
state of mind (psychology)Affect refers to the experience of feeling or emotion. Affect is a key part of the process of an organism's interaction with stimuli. The word also refers sometimes to affect display, which is "a facial, vocal, or gestural behavior that serves as an indicator of affect" .The affective domain...
. "Affection" is popularly used to denote a feeling or type of
loveLove is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
, amounting to more than goodwill or
friendshipFriendship is a form of interpersonal relationship generally considered to be closer than association, although there is a range of degrees of intimacy in both friendships and associations. Friendship and association are often thought of as spanning across the same continuum...
. Writers on
ethicsEthics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
generally use the word to refer to distinct states of feeling, both lasting and spasmodic. Some contrast it with
passionPassion is a term applied to a very strong feeling about a person or thing. Passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire for something....
as being free from the distinctively sensual element.
Restricted Definition
More specifically, the word has been restricted to
emotionEmotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...
al states, the object of which is a person. In the former sense, it is the Greek "
pathosPathos represents an appeal to the audience's emotions. Pathos is a communication technique used most often in rhetoric , and in literature, film and other narrative art....
" and as such it appears in the writings of
FrenchThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
philosopher
René DescartesRené Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
,
DutchThe Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
philosopher
Baruch SpinozaBaruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
, and most of the writings of early British ethicists. However, on various grounds (e.g., that it does not involve anxiety or excitement and that it is comparatively inert and compatible with the entire absence of the sensuous element), it is generally and usefully distinguished from passion. In this narrower sense the word has played a great part in ethical systems, which have spoken of the social or parental
affections as in some sense a part of moral obligation. For a consideration of these and similar problems, which depend ultimately on the degree in which the affections are regarded as voluntary, see
H. SidgwickHenry Sidgwick was an English utilitarian philosopher and economist. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research, a member of the Metaphysical Society, and promoted the higher education of women...
,
Methods of Ethics pp. 345–349.
Affectionate behavior
Numerous behaviors are used by people to express affection. Some theories suggest that affectionate behavior evolved from parental nurturing behavior due to its associations with hormonal rewards with research verifying that expressions of affection, although commonly evaluated positively, can be considered negative if they pose implied threats to one's well being. Furthermore, affectionate behavior in positively
valenceValence, as used in psychology, especially in discussing emotions, means the intrinsic attractiveness or aversiveness of an event, object, or situation. However, the term is also used to characterize and categorize specific emotions. For example, the emotions popularly referred to as "negative",...
d relationships may be associated with numerous health benefits. Other, more loving type gestures of affectionate behavior include obvious signs of liking a person.
Psychology
In psychology the terms
affection and
affective are of great importance. As all intellectual phenomena have by experimentalists been reduced to sensation, so all emotion has been and is regarded as reducible to simple mental affection, the element of which all emotional manifestations are ultimately composed. The nature of this element is a problem that has been provisionally, but not conclusively, solved by many psychologists; the method is necessarily experimental, and all experiments on feeling are peculiarly difficult. The solutions proposed are two. In the first, all affection phenomena are primarily divisible into those that are pleasurable and those that are the reverse. The main objections to this are that it does not explain the infinite variety of phenomena, and that it disregards the distinction that most philosophers admit between higher and lower pleasures. The second solution is that every sensation has its specific affective quality, though by reason of the poverty of language many of these have no name. W. Wundt,
Outlines of PsychologyPsychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
(trans. C. H. Judd,
LeipzigLeipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, 1897), maintains that we may group under three main affective directions, each with its negative, all the infinite varieties in question; these are (a)
pleasurePleasure describes the broad class of mental states that humans and other animals experience as positive, enjoyable, or worth seeking. It includes more specific mental states such as happiness, entertainment, enjoyment, ecstasy, and euphoria...
, or rather pleasantness, and
displeasureSuffering, or pain in a broad sense, is an individual's basic affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm. Suffering may be qualified as physical or mental. It may come in all degrees of intensity, from mild to intolerable. Factors of duration and...
, (b) tension and relaxation, (c) excitement and depression. These two views are antithetic and no solution has been discovered.
American psychologist
Henry MurrayHenry Alexander Murray was an American psychologist who taught for over 30 years at Harvard University. He was Director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic in the School of Arts and Sciences after 1930 and colluded with Stanley Cobb, Bullard Professor of Neuropathology at the Medical School to...
(1893–1988) developed a theory of
personalityPersonality type refers to the psychological classification of different types of individuals. Personality types are sometimes distinguished from personality traits, with the latter embodying a smaller grouping of behavioral tendencies. Types are sometimes said to involve qualitative differences...
that was organized in terms of motives, presses, and needs. According to Murray, these psychogenic needs function mostly on the unconscious level, but play a major role in our personality. Murray classified five affection needs:
Five Affection Needs
| Need |
Definition |
| Affiliation The Need for affiliation is a term that was popularized by David McClelland and describes a person's need to feel a sense of involvement and "belonging" within a social group; McClellend's thinking was strongly influenced by the pioneering work of Henry Murray who first identified underlying...
|
Spending time with other people |
| Nurturance |
Taking care of another person |
| Play Play is a term employed in ethology and psychology to describe to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment...
|
Having fun with others |
RejectionSocial rejection occurs when an individual is deliberately excluded from a social relationship or social interaction. The topic includes both interpersonal rejection and romantic rejection. A person can be rejected on an individual basis or by an entire group of people...
|
Rejecting other people |
| Succorance In social psychology, the everyday concept of helpfulness is really technically defined as the property of providing useful assistance, and friendliness evidenced by a kindly and helpful disposition [syn: kindliness]....
|
Being helped or protected by others |
Two methods of experiment on affection have been tried:
- The first, introduced by A. Mosso, the Italian
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
psychologist, consists in recording the physical phenomena that accompany modifications of the affective consciousness. Thus it is found that the action of the heartThe human heart is a muscular organ that provides a continuous blood circulation through the cardiac cycle and is one of the most vital organs in the human body...
is accelerated by pleasant, and retarded by unpleasant, stimuli; again, changes of weight and volume are found to accompany modifications of affection—and so on. Apart altogether from the facts that this investigation is still in its infancy and that the conditions of experiment are insufficiently understood, its ultimate success is rendered highly problematical by the essential fact that real scientific results can be achieved only by data recorded in connection with a perfectly normal subject; a conscious or interested subject introduces variable factors that are probably incalculable.
- The second is Fechner
Fechner is a surname of:* Christian Fechner , a French film producer and screenwriter* Gustav Fechner , a German experimental psychologist* Harry Fechner , a German football defender...
's method; it consists of recording the changes in feeling-tone produced in a subject by bringing him in contact with a series of conditions, objects or stimuli graduated according to a scientific plan and presented singly in pairs or in groups. The result is a comparative table of likes and dislikes.
Mention should also be made of a third method that has hardly yet been tried, namely, that of endeavouring to isolate one of the three
directions by the method of suggestion or even hypnotic trance observations.
See also
- Affectional orientation
Affectional orientation is used both alternatively and side-by-side with sexual orientation. It is based on the perspective that sexual attraction is but a single component of a larger dynamic. To holders of this view, one's orientation is defined by whom one is predisposed to fall in love with,...
- Affective filter
- Public display of affection
Public displays of affection are acts of physical intimacy in the view of others. What are acceptable displays of affection vary between cultures as well as to time and context. Which acts are acceptable have also varied over time...
- Doctrine of the affections
The doctrine of the affections, also known as the doctrine of affects, doctrine of the passions, theory of the affects, or by the German term Affektenlehre was a theory in musical aesthetics popular in the Baroque era...
- Terms of endearment
Terms of Endearment is a 1983 romantic comedy-drama film adapted by James L. Brooks from the novel by Larry McMurtry and starring Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, and Jack Nicholson...
- Affectionism
Affectionism is a school of thought which considers affections of central importance. Although it is not found in mainstream Western philosophy, it does exist in Indian philosophy....
- List of terms of endearment