These Aren't The Droids You Are Looking for: Promises and Challenges for the Intersection of Affective Science and Robotics/AI

A More Connected Future: How Social Connection, Interdisciplinary Approaches, and New Technology Will Shape the Affective Science of Loneliness, a Commentary on the Special Issue

The recent Special Issue of Affective Science considered "The Future of Affective Science," offering new directions for the field. One recurring theme was the need to consider the social nature of emotional experiences. In this article, we take an interdisciplinary approach toward studies of social connection that builds upon current theoretical foundations to address an important public health issue - loneliness. Loneliness is an affective state that is characterized by feelings of isolation and has widespread adverse effects on mental and physical health. Recent studies have established links between loneliness, social connection, and well-being, but most of this work has been siloed in separate fields. We bridge these themes, leveraging advances in technology, such as artificial intelligence-based voice assistants (e.g., Alexa), to illuminate new avenues for detecting and intervening against loneliness "in the wild." Recognizing the power of connection among individuals as social beings and among researchers with shared goals, affective science can advance our understanding of loneliness and provide tangible benefits to society at large.

Affectivism and the Emotional Elephant: How a Componential Approach Can Reconcile Opposing Theories to Serve the Future of Affective Sciences

This article discusses how the affectivism framework and the componential approach to emotion may serve the future of affective sciences. A particular aim of the article is to show that an appraisal-based componential approach to emotion can help reconcile opposing theories. It begins by contextualizing the evolution of emotion science within the framework of affectivism, acknowledging that the significant epistemological differences between various theories have paradoxically spurred interest in studying emotion across various perspectives and disciplines. If affectivism is regarded as the pursuit of a deeper understanding of not only emotions and other affective processes but also cognitive and behavioral processes, then its success can be partly attributed to the existence of multiple approaches, allowing each discipline and perspective to advance using the most suitable theory and methodology. We contend that a componential approach reveals that the five principal theories of emotion have each focused on one of five components of emotion. Overall, based on the analysis of several articles published in the special issue on the future of affective science, we argue that affective scientists are well equipped not only to build a future in which conceptual and methodological tools will be used to test diverging hypotheses between competing theories but also to acknowledge and celebrate where such theories converge.

A Louder Call for the Integration of Multiple Nonverbal Channels in the Study of Affect

Affective science has increasingly sought to represent emotional experiences multimodally, measuring affect through a combination of self-report ratings, linguistic output, physiological measures, and/or nonverbal expressions. However, despite widespread recognition that non-facial nonverbal cues are an important facet of expressive behavior, measures of nonverbal expressions commonly focus solely on facial movements. This Commentary represents a call for affective scientists to integrate a larger range of nonverbal cues-including gestures, postures, and vocal cues-alongside facial cues in efforts to represent the experience of emotion and its communication. Using the measurement and analysis of vocal cues as an illustrative case, the Commentary considers challenges, potential solutions, and the theoretical and translational significance of working to integrate multiple nonverbal channels in the study of affect.

The Future of Affective Science: Introduction to the Special Issue

Modern affective science-the empirical study of emotional responding and affective experience-has been active for a half-century. The Future of Affective Science special issue considers the history of this field and proposes new directions for the decades ahead. Contributors represent diverse theoretical perspectives, methodological expertise, and domains of study, and the special issue includes both literature reviews and new empirical studies as illustrations. This introductory article synthesizes the contributions, articulating the broader context of the current status of our field and highlighting common themes across articles as well as gaps notable even in this special issue. Sections of the article address theoretical and conceptual issues, research methodology, the questions we ask, and translation of basic affective science to applied domains. We conclude that much has been learned from the first 50 years of affective science, and it is now time for new theories, new research questions, and innovative methods for the decades ahead.