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THEORETICAL GROUNDS AND AN ABSTRACT MODEL
This section starts with a review of the basic concepts and relationships of affect that have been
studied in three reference disciplines of IS: psychology, marketing and consumer research, and
organizational and social psychology. Based on findings in these three fields, an abstract model of
an individual interacting with stimuli is proposed, which provides a ground for further discussions
of affect studies in IS.
Theoretical Background
Table 14.1 summarizes the important concepts to be introduced in this section and used in the rest
of the paper. These concepts will be discussed in detail later.
Affect, Core Affect, Emotion, and Mood
Psychology has provided major theoretical bases for research on affect. In this field, affect-related
concepts such as emotion and mood have been studied for a long time and continue to be a focal
research area (Remington et al., 2000). For example, an examination of articles published between
1991 and 1997 in the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
, a primary psychology journal,
shows a total of 359 (30 percent) articles in which emotion was assessed (Russell and Barrett,
1999). Recently, the concept of affect has been further analyzed and clarified (e.g., Russell, 2003),
which greatly promotes the usability of this concept in other fields.
Basically, the structure of affect includes two independent dimensions, valence and arousal,
which are also called the “big two” of affect (Yik and Russell, 2001). The circumplex model of
affect was created by Schosberg (1952, 1941) and subsequently most extensively elaborated by
Russell (1980). It is one of the most widely studied models (Remington et al., 2000). Figure 14.1
shows the two dimensions of affect. The horizontal dimension is pleasure-displeasure (or valence),
ranging from one extreme (e.g., agony) to the other extreme (e.g., ecstasy) and the vertical dimen-
sion is arousal (or activation), ranging from sleepiness to excitement (Russell, 2003).
Recently, affect has been further clarified, and core affect was identified as a primitive concept
upon which all other affective concepts, including emotions, are built (Russell, 2003; Russell and
Barrett, 1999). Core affect is a continuous assessment of one's current state. Core affect is object
free (free-floating) and depicts the affective state using valence and arousal (Russell, 2003).
Affective reaction toward interacting with an object is a person's subjective perception or judg-
ment about whether such interaction will change his or her core affect or his or her emotion toward
the object.
Cognitive reaction toward interacting with the object involves cognitive reasoning, or
appraisal, and is a weighting of the implications of an event for one's well-being. Cognitive reac-
tion and affective reaction to interacting with an object can be quite different: one might under-
stand taking a medicine as useful and necessary for one's health; nevertheless, one can at the same
time consider it unpleasant due to its smell and taste.
Another commonly seen concept and term is mood. Usually the concepts of emotion and mood
are distinguished from each other by one of three criteria: duration, intensity, and diffuseness or
globality (Frijda, 1993). In general, emotions have shorter duration and higher intensity than moods.
Of more interest, emotion is usually toward a particular object or objects, while mood provides a
“background.” Specifically, emotions are intentional phenomena and usually involve a subject-object
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