Valence

In affective science, valence is the dimension of emotional experience that describes positivity versus negativity — whether a feeling is pleasant or unpleasant. Paired with arousal, valence forms the basis of the widely used two-dimensional circumplex model of emotion: happiness is high-valence / moderate-to-high-arousal; anger is low-valence / high-arousal; calmness is high-valence / low-arousal; sadness is low-valence / low-arousal. In accessibility research, valence cues (visual colour, typography style, haptic rhythm) have been shown to be more reliably interpreted than arousal cues, making valence a common design target for expressive captions and affective media.