A Description of the Affective Quality Attributed to Environments
Author(s)
Russell, J. A.; Pratt, G.
Abstract
The meaning that persons attribute to environments is divided into perceptual cognitive meaning and affective meaning. Affective meaning is then conceptualized as a 2-dimensional bipolar space that can be defined by 8 variables falling in the following circular order around the perimeter: pleasant (arbitrarily set at 0 degrees), exciting (45 degrees), arousing (90 degrees), distressing (135 degrees), unpleasant (180 degrees), gloomy (225 degrees), sleepy (270 degrees), and relaxing (315 degrees, which is thus 45 degrees from pleasant). Alternatively, the same space can be defined by 2 orthogonal bipolar dimensions of pleasant-unpleasant and arousing-sleepy, or equally well by exciting-gloomy and distressing-relaxing. Reliable verbal scales (based on data from 241 subjects) for these 8 variables were developed and shown to approximate the proposed theoretical structure.
