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.

The term Affect generally suggests an emotion. It is used in various ways in various contexts:

• Affect (philosophy).
• Affect (psychology), referring to feeling or emotion.
• Affect display (psychology) refers to apparent signs of emotion, such as facial expression, vocalization, and posture
• Affective science, the scientific study of emotion.
• Any of several terms in abnormal psychology, including.

• Blunted affect or affective flattening, a reduction in emotional reactivity.
• Labile affect, the unstable display of emotion.

• Affective computing, an area of research in computer science aiming to simulate emotional processes.
• Affekt (the German term, which is often used in this context) in musical and other aesthetic theory. (The article currently redirects to Doctrine of the affections.)
• Doctrine of the affections, an important theory in musical aesthetics.

The adjective affected is used to describe fake or intentionally assumed behavior, as in affected accent.

Please note that although the word "affect" is most commonly found in verb form, it also exists as a noun, and as such is often confused with the word "effect" (itself most commonly a noun, but occasionally found in verb form).