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Mood, similar to emotion, is a state of affect. Mood doesnât necessarily have to have a specific stimuli or cause but rather it is as a result of a more diffused and unfocused occurrence. Emotion, however, has a clear cause. Affect also describes the state of feeling or experience of emotion.
Most of the time, you'll want affect as a verb meaning to influence something and effect for the something that was influenced. The difference between affect and effect is so slippery that people have started using impact as a verb instead. Don't be one of them! Another trick is to remember that affect comes first alphabetically, and an action (to affect) has to occur before you can have a result (an effect).