The Affective Agency: An Agency with Feelings and Emotions

Abstract

In this paper we develop a cultural socio-cognitive theory of plural affective agency. We integrate James Gross’ model of Emotion Regulation with our earlier work on Normative Personality within the context of Mindset Agency Theory. Through the Personality Theory we identify a necessary number of three bipolar normative personality traits, these referring to self-identification, self-regulation and self-organisation of a “living” social/organisational system, and two bipolar traits which regulate the interaction of an agency (an organisation) with its cultural and operative environments. Through this we modify and extend Gross’ approach and model the interaction between ‘reason and the emotions’. The Theory of the Affective Agency involves interactive cognitive and affective traits. These traits are epistemically independent (uncorrelated); and operate on a bipolar scale, the alternate poles having an auxiliary function to each other, where the traits may take intermediary “balanced” states between the poles.

Keywords: Plural affective agency, socio-cognitive agency, bipolar traits, emotion generation, emotion regulation, configuration model