A circumplex model of affect.

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 emotiondenoting adjectives in four different ways: Ross' 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 subjects' self-reports of their current affective states.