affect
Psychologists study how affect affect behavior in various situations.
The sentence describes how mental health professionals investigate the ways emotional displays influence actions.
Meanings
to have an influence on; to produce a change in; or, to pretend or assume
- Climate change will affect future generations.
- She affected a posh accent at the party.
the observable expression of emotion (a clinical psychology term)
- The patient presented with flat affect.
- Mood disorders are often diagnosed by examining affect alongside reported feelings.
Word origin
Both senses descend from Latin afficere ('to do something to, exert influence on'), past participle affectus, formed from ad- ('to') + facere ('to do, make'). The technical noun sense /ˈæfɛkt/ entered psychological vocabulary in the late 19th century from German Affekt; the verb has been in English since the 1500s.
Fun fact
The famous 'affect/effect' confusion involves not two but three or four words: the verb affect (/əˈfɛkt/), the verb effect (/ɪˈfɛkt/, meaning 'to bring about'), and the noun effect (/ɪˈfɛkt/, meaning 'a result'). The clinical noun affect is the rarest member of the family.