情感适应是指对重复或连续刺激的情感反应变弱的心理过程。在解释情感适应的心理机制和过程的理论中,最有影响的是AREA模型。该模型认为个体注意到与自身相关且难以解释的事件时,对事件作出情感反应并试图解释或理解;若解释成功,注意力会减弱进而适应该事件,对应的情感反应也会变弱。大量关于消极事件与积极事件的研究为AREA模型提供了实证支持。未来研究需要从影响情感适应速度的因素、跨文化研究、适应轨迹的时间精确性以及干预措施等方面进一步探索。
Affective adaptation is the psychological processes that cause an affective response to weaken after one or more exposures to a stimulus. In those theories that illustrate the psychology mechanism and procedure of affective adaptation, AREA model is the most influential theory. The AREA model holds that people attend to self-relevant, unexplained events, react emotionally to these events, explain or reach an understanding of the events, and thereby adapt to the events, then attend less and have weaker emotional reactions to them. Lots of empirical studies concerning negative events and positive events supported the AREA model. The development of this field needs to deeply investigate the variables that facilitate or impede affective adaptation, cross-cultural research, the precision of the temporal localization of the adaptation trajectory and happiness interventions.