You might hear, or read more likely: 'The influence of positive effect on social behaviour'.

You may sometimes run across the word with an 'a' but it's pronounced differently, meaning a good or bad feeling towards something, or an attitude towards something. Since we're being complete here, I'll give you one last little meaning. Here's an example: 'New privacy regulations will take effect on July 1st.'

So that's effect - with an 'e' - used as a noun. There are also a number of fixed phrases so something that you might hear quite often is 'take effect'. So you could say: 'It is pointless to try and effect a chance in policy now'. There is a rarer and more formal use of 'effect' as a verb - that's the one with the 'e' - meaning 'to make something happen'. So: 'What effect will the new law have on road use?' Part of the problem, you see, is not only that these two words are spelt very similarly, often pronounced the same, but their meanings are also very similar - one's a noun, one's a verb. The word with an 'e' - effect - is usually used as a noun and it means the result of an influence. So you could say: 'Your emotional state affects how you remember things'. What's the difference? The main use of 'affect' - with an 'a' - is as a verb meaning to have an influence. I tend to say and /Ifekt/ - so I tend to pronounce the one that begins with 'e', / Ifekt/ but not everybody does. So many people say affect and effect - for the word that begins with 'a' they say and for the word that begins with 'e' they say.

Hi Qais, You have asked a question that many native speakers of English ask when they are writing and part of the problem is that these two words, although spelt differently, are pronounced the same by many people in many contexts.

Affect on you