Verb

Infinitive to affect

Third person singular affects

Simple past affected

Past participle affected

Present participle affecting

to affect (third-person singular simple present affects, present participle affecting, simple past and past participle affected)

1. (transitive) To influence or alter.

   The experience affected me deeply.

   The heat of the sunlight affected the speed of the chemical reaction.

2. (transitive) To move to emotion.

   He was deeply affected by the themes in the play.

3. (transitive) Of an illness or condition, to infect or harm (a part of the body).

   Hepatitis affects the liver.

When used as a descriptor or adjective, affect means a change, and usually refers to an emotion or symptom. Affected, when used in a description, refers to fake or intentionally assumed behaviour (a changed behaviour), i.e., an affected accent.

In general, to affect refers to the consequences of a change or the influence a change has on something else. In this sense, it is often confused with to effect, which generally means to cause a change. When used as verbs, effect refers to the cause of a change ("the governor effected a change in policy"), and affect refers to the consequences of that change ("the new policy really affected our family"). An affect also refers to that change ("her affected accent really had an effect on me"; "her affected accent really affected my view of her").

Affect may refer to:

• Affect (philosophy)
• Affect (psychology)
  • Blunted affect or affective flattening, a reduction in emotional reactivity.
  • Labile affect, the unstable display of emotion.
  • Affect display, signs of emotion, such as facial expression, vocalization, and posture
  • Affective science, the scientific study of emotion
• Affective computing, an area of research in computer science aiming to simulate emotional processes.
• Affekt, a German term often used in musical and other aesthetic theory
  • Doctrine of the affections, an important theory in the aesthetics of music