I am twenty-two years old, in college, and I like to think of myself as somewhat smart. Which is why it is inexcusable that I don't really know the difference between 'affect' and 'effect.'

I am a psychology major and as you can imagine these words come up a lot, when writing something, I generally choose whichever word seems to fit the sentence better. That's sort of stupid, so I finally decided to just look it up.

What is the difference between 'affect' and 'effect'? The simple answer is that 'affect' is a verb, and 'effect' is a noun.

Examples from dictionary.com;
The cold weather affected the crops.
Exposure to the sun had the effect of toughening his skin.

Affect- to act on or move the feelings of someone/something
Effect- something that is produced, power to produce results.

All this seems simple enough, I feel kind of stupid for just avoiding it for so long.