Affect and feeling are neurologically and phenomenologically distinct categories.
Current neuroscientific and developmental frameworks in affective science strongly support the distinct categorization of affect and feeling, separating non-conscious physiological processing and behavioral action readiness from the subjective conscious experience of emotion.
The retrieved literature contains multiple theoretical frameworks (such as the Walla Emotion Model and contemporary developmental reviews) that explicitly argue for and define the neurobiological and phenomenological distinctions between affect/emotion and conscious feeling.
Christou AI, Bacopoulou F. Emotion and Feeling in Parent-Child Dyads: Neurocognitive and Psychophysiological Pathways of Development.. 2025. https://doi.org/10.3390/children12111478
Paper [7] defines emotion as a biologically embedded system of action readiness and feeling as the consciously experienced, representational outcome emerging through cognitive appraisal.
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Walla P. The Walla Emotion Model (WEM): A New Terminology Redefining Affective Dysregulation in Clinical Psychopathology.. 2026. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci16050512
Paper [9] establishes the Walla Emotion Model, which separates affect and feeling by defining emotions as behavioral outputs and feelings as the conscious perception of released neurochemicals.
Walla P. The Olfactory Origins of Affective Processing: A Neurobiological Synthesis Through the Walla Emotion Model.. 2026. https://doi.org/10.3390/life16010086
Paper [10] utilizes a neurobiological framework to explicitly distinguish between rapid non-conscious affective processing and conscious, subjective feelings.
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