"In August 2025, I published my own attempt at characterizing affect, which I call the Affect Management Framework (AMF; Haynes-LaMotte, 2025). The conceptualization is grounded in the contemporary neuroscience perspectives of Predictive Processing(Clark, 2023) and Active Inference (Parr, Pezzulo, & Friston, 2022). It also draws inspiration from Ecological Psychology (Gibson, 1979; Withagen, 2022) and my own clinical experiences. Below I provide a high-level overview of the AMF, with the intention to explore each of these areas in more detail across other posts."
"If affect is a positive-to-negative feeling in consciousness, where exactly does it come from? Which processes of the brain produce it and which do not? While we still don't have completely clear answers to these questions, a lot can be understood by synthesizing the evidence that's currently available, which indicates that a wide range of processes seem to sway affect."
Affect is defined as a moment-to-moment valenced (positive-to-negative) experience in consciousness that guides behavior. The Affect Management Framework (AMF) offers a characterization grounded in Predictive Processing and Active Inference and informed by Ecological Psychology and clinical experience. The term affect has been used variably and has not reached a consensus definition despite two centuries of neuroscience and psychological advances. Multiple brain processes appear to influence affect. An evolutionary perspective on brain function supports focusing on mechanisms that find and manage biologically relevant conditions, aiding synthesis of available evidence about affect.
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