The phoenix of bipolarity: Reply to Watson and Tellegen

(1999) agreed that when various factors, including activation, are taken into account, the structure of self-reported affect includes a bipolar dimension contrasting pleasant with unpleasant feelings. Agree-ment on this the central conclusion of our review may surprise readers familiar with the widespread claim that pleasant and unpleasant affect are not bipolar opposites but are largely independent of one another. Pleasant and unpleasant, relaxed and tense, elated and de-pressed—such pairs seem bipolar. But appearances can be decep-tive, and psychometric evidence has challenged their bipolarity, raising fundamental questions that have vexed the psychology of affect for over 40 years now. These questions arise in basic research (how should affect be conceptualized and assessed?) and in applied contexts (are the debilitating effects of negative affect counteracted by, or independent of, increases in positive affect?). Over the past dozen years, the bipolar view of affect has appeared to be on its deathbed. The question of bipolarity recently returned to center stage in the psychology of affect (Cacioppo