Affective Domain 1 Overview of the Affective Domain

Mounting evidence supports the position that human beings are inherently emotional beings and that emotion and affective development impacts human development and behavior in a wide variety of important ways. This paper provides an overview of emotion and the affective domain, including developmental considerations and methods that can be used to facilitate development in this domain. Also discussed are instruments and methods to assessment emotional and affective development. Life in America at the dawning of the 21st century exhibits a complex tapestry of distressful social and cultural problems, including public school and church shootings, racial and ethnic tensions, apathy and cynicism in the political sphere, grave challenges to the family unit, and disturbing levels of youth violence, drug abuse, alcoholism, and teen pregnancy. All of these problems have an important feature in common – they are heavily influenced and, in some cases, dominated by the power of human emotions (Goleman, 1995; Greenspan, 1997; LeDoux, 1996). Most psychologists agree that the study of emotion and the affective domain is one of the most perplexing topics in the field of psychology (Plutchik, 2001). However, even the somewhat confusing picture produced to date has led researchers to conclude that one’s emotional