Definition
Plain language
Whether a feeling is pleasant or unpleasant.
As stated in the literature
One of the two principal axes of emotion in affective psychology (paired with arousal), spanning unpleasant to pleasant; emerges as a top axis of variation in a model's learned emotion vectors.
Why it matters: Sorting feelings by pleasant versus unpleasant gives a simple, consistent way to describe and compare emotions across many situations.
For example, the calm relief of finishing a hard task has positive valence, while the dread before bad news has negative valence.
Heard on the show
“Same capability, opposite valence depending on whether the agent has correctly recognized that it shouldn't be doing this.”Episode 061 — When Helpful Agents Go Sideways: A 404 Error, Campus Security, and Why Alignment Misses This