Affect Theory

Through looking at Robots and Cyborgs, I wanted to try and get my head around how people become close to these robots simply by the human characteristics they portray through facial expressions. In psychology, affect is an emotion or subjectively experienced feeling. Affect theory is a branch of psychoanalysis that attempts to organize affects into discrete categories and connect each one with its typical response. So, for example, the affect of joy is observed through the reaction of smiling. These affects can be identified through immediate facial reactions that people have to a stimulus, typically well before they could process any real response to the stimulus.


If a person acknowledges that a robot is showing emotion simply by its facial expression, the person will instinctively see this Robot as more 'human-like' simply by its expressions and its capability to express emotions.


The word affect, as used in Silvian Tomkins theory, specifically refers to the "biological portion of emotion," that is, to "hard-wired, preprogrammed, genetically transmitted mechanisms that exist in each of us" which, when triggered, precipitates a "known pattern of biological events," although it is also acknowledged that, in adults, the effective experience is a result of both the innate mechanism and a "complex matrix of nested and interacting ideo-effective formations."

The nine affects

These are the nine affects, listed with a low/high intensity label for each affect and accompanied by its biological expression:

Positive:

• Enjoyment/Joy - smiling, lips wide and out
• Interest/Excitement - eyebrows down, eyes tracking, eyes looking, closer listening

Neutral:

• Surprise/Startle - eyebrows up, eyes blinking

Negative:

• Anger/Rage - frowning, a clenched jaw, a red face
• Disgust - the lower lip raised and protruded, head forward and down
• Dissmell (reaction to bad smell) - upper lip raised, head pulled back
• Distress/Anguish - crying, rhythmic sobbing, arched eyebrows, mouth lowered
• Fear/Terror - a frozen stare, a pale face, coldness, sweat, erect hair
• Shame/Humiliation - eyes lowered, the head down and averted, blushing