Affecting qualitative health psychology

The ‘affective turn’ is a contemporary movement within the humanities, social science, and psychology to investigate affect, emotion, and feeling as hybrid phenomena jointly constituted from both biological and social influences. Health and illness are themselves jointly constituted in this way, and many of the topics, concerns, and methods of health psychology are strongly permeated by affective phenomena. Qualitative research in health psychology might therefore benefit by engaging with this work. This paper describes some features of the affective turn and suggests theories, terminology, and methods that might be useful.