This article addresses the use of the dominance factor in computational representations of affect. For an introduction on the terminology of affect, emotion, mood and attitude in relation to computing, see Hudlicka (2003) and Picard (1997). Dominance in this article refers to the third factor of the modern factor-based affect representation commonly known as Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance (PAD) (Bradley & Lang, 1994; Mehrabian, 1980; Osgood, 1966; Russell & Mehrabian, 1977). This article is not meant as a theoretical account for, or against the existence of dominance as a psychological construct in emotion and affect. Further it is not intended to give a historical account of factor-based approaches towards representing emotion (such as Wundt’s). I focus on practical PAD usage in a computational setting, and present evidence that dominance is a useful and sometimes necessary dimension, both for human affect measurement and synthetic affect representation. Further I propose that PAD factors are a useful intermediate representational format for emotion and affect in computational systems by comparing PAD with Scherer’s stimulus checks. But first, I will explain in plain terms what dominance represents.