Both affect and stress are directly related to strong negative emotions. However, there is a big difference between the two that needs to be taken into account. Particular importance is given to it in judicial practice.
What is affect and stress
Affect is a bright and strong emotional excitement, in which a person loses control over himself, becomes uncontrollable, stops thinking logically. As a rule, such a state is caused by a sharp change in circumstances that are important to a person, or by systematic incitement to anger, ending in some serious, unsettling impact. In a state of passion, people fall into a rage. At this moment, they can scream, hit someone who is nearby, break something, even if it is not the cause of their anger.
Despite the fact that in a state of passion, a person cannot control his actions, at the initial stage he still has the ability to extinguish the flash and pull himself together.
Stress arises as a person's reaction to extreme circumstances or to prolonged serious pressure that is bad for the psyche. This condition is especially common during difficult periods of life associated with demanding projects, problems at work, difficult exams, or situations such as divorce and dismissal.
What is the Difference Between Affect and Stress
One of the most important differences between these two states is their duration. Stress tends to last for a relatively long period of time. He can haunt a person for several days or even weeks: in particular, during sessions, the implementation of important business projects. The affect does not last very long and is more like a bright flash.
The duration of exposure to stress depends on how stable the person's psyche is. However, in any case, this state lasts longer than the affect.
Another very important difference between these two concepts is that in a state of stress, a person mobilizes all his inner resources to rescue and search for a way out of a dangerous situation, even if he does not succeed, but in a state of passion, on the contrary, he can to commit acts dangerous to his own life, including rushing at an armed enemy.
Stress either puts a person into a state of numbness when he tries to cope with negative emotions with minimal harm to himself, or gives him the opportunity to quickly navigate and find a way out of this situation. Affect is characterized by an instant narrowing of consciousness: the normal interaction of excitation and inhibition is disrupted, and the person loses the ability to think. As a result, under stress, a person can reason, and in a state of passion, the subcortical formations "break free," and this leads to the fact that intelligent behavior is replaced by primitive reactions.
