feeloften

Feeloften is a Dutch term used to describe the frequency with which a person experiences emotional states in daily life. The word combines gevoel, meaning feeling, with oft, an older or literary form of “often.” In scholarly and informal discussions, feeloften is used to indicate how often emotional episodes occur, rather than how intense they are or how long they last.

In application, feeloften is treated as a descriptive quality of emotional life. It can apply to overall patterns of emotions across positive and negative valences or focus on the frequency of salient emotional episodes such as joy, anger, sadness, or surprise. The concept is distinct from mood (a more prolonged state) and affect (the observable expression of emotion) and from emotional intensity, which addresses how strong emotions feel rather than how often they occur.

Measurement of feeloften is usually based on self-report, often via Likert-scale questions like “How often do you feel strong emotions in a typical day?” Researchers may construct a feeloften index by aggregating responses across multiple items. However, there is no universally accepted scale or formal psychometric validation, and interpretations can be influenced by cultural norms, self-awareness, and recall bias.

Relation to other concepts includes areas such as affective variability, emotional regulation, and general well-being research. Feeloften is often discussed in non-technical contexts as a way to describe everyday emotional life rather than to diagnose or treat a condition. It remains a relatively informal or niche construct rather than a standardized measure in mainstream psychology. See also affect, mood, emotional regulation, and affective variability.