"At every moment, there is something a person/animal is trying to do (a goal) and a reason they are trying to do it (a context for that goal). In the Affect Management Framework ( AMF; Haynes-LaMotte, 2025), contextualized goals are constantly shifting in the brain, informed by the senses of the world and the body ( vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell, interoception, and proprioception) as well as the semantic factors of meaningfulness, certainty, and agency."
"Merely having a goal is one way of managing one's affect (e.g., by preventing boredom). This idea is supported by ecological momentary assessment research indicating that people are engaged in a state of mind-wandering about 25% to 50% of the time (Gross, Raynes, Schooler, Guo, & Dobkins, 2024; Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010), and that this mind-wandering state is associated with more negative affect than is attention towards the present-moment task (Gross et al., 2024; Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010)."
Organisms continuously hold contextualized goals defined by sensory inputs (vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell, interoception, proprioception) and semantic factors (meaningfulness, certainty, agency). Affect becomes bound to these meaningful goals and influences momentary valence, motivation, and decision-making about pursuing or abandoning goals. Task-relevant stimuli tend to produce more positive affect than irrelevant stimuli. Maintaining goals can regulate affect by preventing boredom and sustaining engagement. Mind-wandering, occurring roughly 25–50% of the time, is linked to more negative affect driven by negative thought valence. Different selections and timing of goals constitute distinct affect-management policies.
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