Dispositional affect

Dispositional affect is a very grown-up way of saying how we generally feel. It means the way we feel about things every day, no matter what happens. Some people feel happy all the time and some people feel sad all the time, and that's what dispositional affect is all about.

Think about how you feel when you wake up in the morning. Do you feel happy and excited to start the day or grumpy and don't want to get out of bed? That feeling you have is called dispositional affect. It's the way you feel most of the time, not just because of something exciting happening that day or because something bad happened to you.

For grown-ups, there are two big types of dispositional affect: positive and negative. Positive means feeling good all the time, and negative means feeling bad all the time. Some people fall in the middle and have a mix of positive and negative feelings, but they still have what's called a dispositional affect.

Dispositional affect can be affected by things like our genes (which we inherit from our parents), our environment (like where we grow up and who we spend time with), and even our daily habits (like how much we exercise and get enough sleep).

So, dispositional affect is just a big grown-up way of talking about how we feel most of the time. Some people are happy all the time, and some people are sad all the time, and that's okay. It's just who they are!