Dominance (Emotion)

In affective science, dominance is the third dimension sometimes added to the two-dimensional valence/arousal plane to form the Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance (PAD) model proposed by Mehrabian and Russell. Dominance describes the degree of control or power an emotion conveys — fear is high-arousal but low-dominance, while anger is high-arousal and high-dominance. PAD is less widely adopted than the two-dimensional circumplex model in accessibility research because it is harder to map onto single visual or haptic output parameters, but it is useful when distinguishing emotions that share valence and arousal (e.g. anger vs fear).