Emotional Valence and Emotional Arousal

Emotional valence is the value associated with emotional stimuli along a continuum from pleasant to unpleasant and from attractive to aversive. Emotional arousal is a continuum of the emotion’s intensity and strength from high to low. For example, happiness is characterized by pleasant valence and relatively high arousal, while sadness or depression is characterized by unpleasant valence and relatively low arousal. Also see Adaptive Prediction and Affective Counter-Regulation