The affect structure revisited

In affective psychology, there is a persistent controversy about the number, the nature and the definition of the affect structure dimensions. Responding to the methodological criticisms addressed to the preceding studies, we conciliated the principal theories regarding the affect structure with the same experimental setting. In particular, using the semantic items all around the circumplex we found three bipolar independent dimensions and using only the PANAS semantic items, we found two unipolar dimensions. Finally, we propose a heuristic theorization of affect based on a current firmly established in social sciences, coherent from semantics to sociology, but largely ignored by researchers in affective psychology, that allows to postulate that affect is all at once cognition, motivation and behaviour.