Circumplex Model of Emotion

A psychological model proposed by James Russell in 1980 that arranges emotional states in a two-dimensional plane defined by valence (pleasant vs unpleasant) and arousal (activated vs calm). The four quadrants correspond to high-arousal positive (e.g. excited, happy), high-arousal negative (angry, tense), low-arousal negative (sad, depressed), and low-arousal positive (calm, relaxed). The circumplex model is the dominant framework for designing affective computing systems and expressive captioning, since it provides a small, continuous parameter space that maps well onto visual (colour, typography) and haptic (rhythm, intensity) output. Critics note that the two dimensions are not fully independent and that some emotions (e.g. surprise, disgust) do not fit neatly.