On the Broad Applicability of the Affective Circumplex: Representations of Affective Knowledge Among Schizophrenia Patients

Studies of affective experience are guided by the assump- tion that the structure of affect generalizes across people. Yet this as- sumption has not been tested among educationally and economically diverse community residents or among individuals with psychopathol- ogy. This study explicitly examined the broad applicability of the va- lence-arousal circumplex and whether schizophrenia patients and nonpatients have comparable knowledge structures of affective phe- nomena. Patients and nonpatients completed similarity ratings of 120 pairs of affect words. Similarity judgments were analyzed separately for each group using a multidimensional scaling procedure, and solu- tions were compared. Results revealed the same two-dimensional va- lence-arousal solution for schizophrenia patients and nonpatients, although there were subtle differences between the groups. These find- ings provide additional evidence that the circumplex model is a useful formalism for representing affective phenomena across diverse popu- lations, and they bolster confidence in existing interpretations of schizophrenia patients' reports of affective experience. Human interaction with the world, whether disordered or norma- tive, is guided by a ubiquitous system: affect. Across many domains of psychological research, investigators have utilized dimensional mod- els of affect to ground their inquiries. Dimensional models of affect have a long history in psychology. A dimensional approach was intro- duced by Wundt's (1912/1924) introspections, and several dimen- sional models exist in modern-day accounts of affect (e.g., Cacioppo, Gardner, & Berntson, 1999; Lang, 1995; Watson & Tellegen, 1985). One of the most well-replicated models is the valence-arousal affec- tive circumplex (Feldman Barrett & Russell, 1998; Remington, Fabri- gar, & Visser, 2000; Russell, 1980; Russell & Feldman Barrett, 1999). Valence refers to the hedonic quality (pleasure or displeasure) of, and arousal (or activation) to the felt activation associated with, affect- related stimuli. The valence-arousal structures have been replicated across cultures, people of different ages, and different types of affec- tive stimuli, and have been used to organize biological measurements related to emotion (e.g., Lang, 1995). Given this replicability, the af- fective circumplex has been thought of as a multipurpose, mathemati- cal formalism for representing affective phenomena as combinations of these two independent dimensions. When they are derived from similarity ratings of affect words, valence and arousal dimensions are thought to represent the basic aspects of semantic knowledge about af- fect (an interpretation consistent with the semantic differential work by Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957). Although not all information about emotion is captured by the circumplex model, it is a useful tool for representing the core features of declarative knowledge about af- fect-related stimuli. Despite the evidence supporting its broad replicability, the valence- arousal model, like so many other phenomena, has not been verified in populations often neglected in psychological research. Indeed, very little research has verified the applicability of the affective circumplex among individuals with lower educational attainment and socioeco- nomic realization than the college students so often used in research. It would be tempting to assume that the model is robust and generaliz- able across many populations, were it not for the fact that contextual and sampling variables have a profound impact on research findings, often in the most unexpected ways. Moreover, despite the burgeoning interest in affective disturbances associated with mental disorders (Kring & Bachorowski, 1999), no research has examined whether the affective circumplex applies to mentally disordered populations, even though such applicability is often assumed. This issue is particularly germane to the study of emotion disturbances in schizophrenia.