The structure of current affect: Controversies and emerging consensus

For some years now, emotion researchers have debated a series of issues rel ated to the structure of consciously experienced affective states. The pres ent article reviews evidence that current affective experience can be summa rized by a structure that is anchored by two bipolar but independent dimens ions of experience, pleasure and activation. Four issues have presented the mselves as central to the nature of this structure: the number of dimension s necessary to describe the space, the bipolarity of the dimensions, whethe r the structure displays a circumplex shape, and the definition of the acti vation dimension. Points of consensus and the remaining controversies regar ding each issue are presented.