Deeply Felt Affect: The Emergence of Valence in Deep Active Inference

TLDR

The positive‑negative axis of emotional valence has long been recognised as fundamental to adaptive behaviour, but its domain‑generality has largely eluded formal theories and modelling. The study develops a principled Bayesian account of emotional valence using deep active inference. The model links valence to subjective fitness via second‑order beliefs, infers valence from expected precision of a phenotype‑congruent action model, and optimises confidence pre‑emptively, with affective charge driving updates. Simulation in a T‑maze shows the agent infers affective state, reduces uncertainty through internal action, and demonstrates active inference’s potential to link affect, action, and implicit meta‑cognition.

Abstract

The positive-negative axis of emotional valence has long been recognised as fundamental to adaptive behaviour, but its domain-generality has largely eluded formal theories and modelling. Using deep active inference – a hierarchical inference scheme that rests on inverting a model of how sensory data are generated – we develop a principled Bayesian account of emotional valence. This formulation associates valence with subjective fitness and exploits the domain-generality of second-order beliefs (i.e., beliefs about beliefs). We construct an affective agent that infers its valence state from the expected precision of its phenotype-congruent action model (i.e., subjective fitness) in any given environment. The ensuing affective states then optimise that confidence pre-emptively. The evidence for inferred (i.e., ‘felt’) valenced states depends upon the (Bayes-optimal) updating term for subjective fitness, which we label affective charge (AC). We simulate affective inference in a T-maze paradigm requiring context learning, followed by context reversal. The result is a deep (biologically plausible) agent that infers its affective state and reduces its uncertainty through internal action (i.e., optimises prior beliefs that underwrite confidence). Thus, we demonstrate the potential of active inference in providing a formal and computationally tractable account of the link between affect, (mental) action, and implicit meta-cognition.