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
“Lower arousal across the board, and slightly lower valence.”Episode 006 — What Happens Inside Claude When It Decides to Blackmail Someone