What is ‘Affect’ in Psychology?

In psychiatry, affect refers to the visible expression of emotion. It is the feeling tone that expresses our words, gestures, and facial expressions in any given moment. It’s the doctor’s window into a patient’s inner emotional state, something observed rather than directly reported.

While mood represents a person’s sustained emotional climate, affect is the short-lived weather that shifts moment to moment depending on the situation.

For instance, a person may have a generally depressed mood but still smile when recalling a fond memory; that momentary expression of warmth is their affect.

Clinically, affect is defined as the subjective and immediate experience of emotion attached to thoughts, ideas, or perceptions. It’s what the clinician infers through the patient’s body language, tone of voice, and facial expression, which may or may not align (or be congruent) with the patient’s stated mood.

Affect can take many forms:

• Normal or broad affect – a full and appropriate range of emotional expression.
• Constricted or restricted affect – a limited emotional range; feelings seem muted.
• Blunted affect – emotions appear markedly reduced in intensity.
• Flat affect – an absence of visible emotional expression.
• Labile affect – rapid, unpredictable shifts in emotional expression.
• Inappropriate affect – emotional responses that don’t match the context (e.g., laughing while discussing a loss).

Understanding affect is vital in mental health assessments because it offers clues to underlying conditions like depression, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder. It helps clinicians see not just what a person says they feel but how they embody those feelings.

In essence, affect is the emotional signature we leave on every interaction subtle yet powerful, revealing more about our inner world than words sometimes can.