Patterns of cognitive appraisal in emotion

There has long been interest in describing emotional experience in terms of underlying dimensions, but traditionally only two dimensions, pleasantness and arousal, have been reliably found. The reasons for these findings are reviewed, and integrating this review with two recent theories of emotions (Roseman, 1984; Scherer, 1982), we propose eight cognitive appraisal dimensions to differentiate emotional experience. In an investigation of this model, subjects recalled past experiences associated with each of 15 emotions, and rated them along the proposed dimensions. Six orthogonal dimensions, pleasantness, anticipated effort, certainty, attentional activity, self-other responsibility/control, and situational control, were recovered, and the emotions varied systematically along each of these dimensions, indicating a strong relation between the appraisal of one's circumstances and one's emotional state. The patterns of appraisal for the different emotions, and the role of each of the dimensions in differentiating emotional experience are discussed.     

The place of appraisal in emotion

Abstract

The concept of “appraisal” has been used in the literature in a dual way: to refer to the content of emotional experience, as well as to the cognitive antecedents of emotions. I argue that appraisal in the former sense is what is contained in information in self-reports and that this information is of limited use for making inferences on emotion antecedents. This is so because emotional experience may contain appraisals that are part of the emotional response rather than belonging to its causes. They often result from elaboration of the experience after it has begun to be generated. Although in most or all emotions some cognitive appraisal processes are essential antecedents, these processes may be much simpler than self-reports (and the semantics of emotion words) may suggest. The appraisal processes that account for emotion elicitation can be assumed to be of a quite elementary kind.     

Dimensions of appraisal and physiological response in emotion

Appraisal theorists propose physiological activity in emotion to be systematically organized around appraisal of the adaptational significance of the environment in ways that promote two functions commonly ascribed to emotion: communication and preparation for coping. However, relations between appraisal and physiological activity remain largely untested. This article reviews existing evidence to generate specific hypotheses linking appraisal to physiological activity and presents an imagery-based experimental test of a subset of these hypotheses. No evidence was found for a relation between other-agency and the eyebrow frown, but brow activity and heart rate were affected by effort-related appraisals: Anticipated effort influenced heart rate, and perceived goal-obstacles influenced the eyebrow frown. Implications of the findings and theoretical approach are discussed.     

Putting appraisal in context: Toward a relational model of appraisal and emotion

According to appraisal theory, emotions result from an individual's meaning analysis of the implications of his/her circumstances for personal well-being, and individual differences in emotion arise when individuals appraise similar situations differently. Relational models of appraisal attempt to describe the situational and dispositional antecedents of appraisals, and should allow one to predict such individual differences. In this article, we review three examples of our efforts toward developing relational appraisal models. In two, we start with a particular appraisal component, motivational relevance and problem-focused coping potential (Smith & Lazarus, 1990), respectively, and describe and test the relational model proposed for that component. In the third, as a precursor to developing a true relational model, we examine another appraisal component, emotion-focused coping potential, from a more dispositional perspective. We conclude by considering both the potential value of relational appraisal models, and future directions in the development of these models.     

Affect intensity and cardiac arousal.

Relationships between affect intensity and basal, evoked, and perceived cardiac arousal were investigated in 3 experiments. Affect intensity was assessed using Larsen and Diener's (1987) Affect Intensity Measure (AIM). Cardiac arousal was evoked with exercise in the 1st study and with mental arithmetic in the 2nd and 3rd. Perceived cardiac arousal was measured under optimal conditions using a standard heartbeat discrimination procedure. Women as a group scored higher on the AIM. Affect intensity was unrelated to basal or evoked cardiac arousal and was negatively related to perceived cardiac arousal in all 3 studies. Data suggest that affect intensity, although unrelated to actual physiological arousal, is negatively related to the accuracy with which individuals perceive their own arousal. Results are discussed within the context of an expanded arousal-regulation model (Blascovich, 1990).     

Affect intensity and processing fluency of deterrents

The theory of emotional intensity (Brehm, 1999) suggests that the intensity of affective states depends on the magnitude of their current deterrents. Our study investigated the role that fluency—the subjective experience of ease of information processing—plays in the emotional intensity modulations as reactions to deterrents. Following an induction phase of good mood, we manipulated both the magnitude of deterrents (using sets of photographs with pre-tested potential to instigate an emotion incompatible with the pre-existent affective state—pity) and their processing fluency (normal vs. enhanced through subliminal priming). Current affective state and perception of deterrents were then measured. In the normal processing conditions, the results revealed the cubic effect predicted by the emotional intensity theory, with the initial affective state being replaced by the one appropriate to the deterrent only in participants exposed to the high magnitude deterrence. In the enhanced fluency conditions the emotional intensity pattern was drastically altered; also, the replacement of the initial affective state occurred at a lower level of deterrence magnitude (moderate instead of high), suggesting the strengthening of deterrence emotional impact by enhanced fluency.     

Determinants of the shape of emotion intensity profiles

It has been shown that variability in the shape of emotion intensity profiles can be described in terms of three functional features, namely steepness at onset, skewness and number of peaks. However, it remains unclear which factors account for variability in each of these features. In the present study participants were asked to report intensity profiles of positive and negative emotions on a daily basis. Information was further collected regarding potential determinants of the functional features of the intensity profiles at three levels: trait-, episode-, and moment-determinants. Regarding steepness at onset, it was found for positive and negative emotions that intensity profiles have an especially explosive start when the eliciting stimulus is important, when the stimulus is still present during the beginning of the episode, and, in case of positive emotions, when the participant is an extravert. Concerning skewness, it was found for positive and negative emotions that profiles reach their peak more often towards the end when the eliciting stimulus is important, when the stimulus is absent during the beginning of the episode but present towards the end, and, in case of negative emotions, when the stimulus is uncontrollable. Regarding the number of peaks, it was found that profiles more often have multiple peaks when the eliciting stimulus is absent during the middle of the emotional episode.     

情绪效价、唤醒度和有无评价影响手部动作

研究探讨情绪正-负效价、唤醒度水平(高、中、低)以及有意识评价对推拉动作的影响。分3个实验进行, 收集反应时(RT)和手部动作指标等。实验1使用正-负效价下高、中、低唤醒水平的图片进行评价并执行推-拉动作任务; 实验2使用中性图片和灰色空白图片完成相同任务; 实验3在不进行效价评估情况下完成推-拉动作。结果表明(1)情绪效价对反应时, 运动时间和到达峰速时间等有显著影响：向上拖动图片时, 消极图片拖得更快; 向下拖动时, 则积极图片更快。(2)情绪唤醒度调节情绪效价对推-拉动作的作用：唤醒度越高, 情绪效价尤其是负性情绪对推-拉动作的作用越大; 反之, 则作用越小。(3)无评价条件下, 情绪效价对推-拉动作无显著影响; 即情绪对动作的影响需要有意识评价的参与。这些结果说明情绪对推拉动作影响可能发生在早期, 不仅影响动作计划, 而且影响到随后动作的执行, 而高唤醒度和有意识评价增强了这种影响。     

Patterns of appraisal and emotion related to taking an exam

Recent research has suggested strong relations between characteristic patterns of appraisal along emotionally relevant dimensions and the experience of specific emotions. However, this work has relied primarily upon ratings of remembered or imagined past events associated with the experience of relatively pure emotions. The present investigation is an attempt to examine cognitive appraisals and emotions during an emotional event in which subjects experience complex emotional blends. Subjects described both their cognitive appraisals and their emotional states just before taking a college midterm examination and, again, immediately after receiving their grades on the exam. Analysis of the ratings revealed that at both times the majority of subjects who felt emotion experienced complex blends of two or more emotions. Correlation and regression analyses indicated that even in the context of these blends, patterns of appraisal, highly similar to those discovered in our earlier research on remembered emotions (Smith & Ellsworth, 1985), characterized the experience of emotions as they were actually felt.     

The role of egocentrism and focalism in the emotion intensity bias

People sometimes judge their emotions, preferences, and attitudes to be more intense than those of other people. Two experiments tested whether this emotion intensity bias in direct comparisons results from two non-motivated cognitive processes—egocentrism and focalism. In Study 1, the intensity bias was found even when comparing a friend’s preferences to peers. In Study 2, attention given to own versus other’s preferences, and the referent of the comparison (self or others) were manipulated. Results indicated that attention to others reduced the bias, presumably by reducing egocentrism. Consistent with focalism, the bias also emerged when a friend was the target of comparison, and the bias was eliminated when the self was the referent rather than the target of comparison. In the discussion, we evaluate these accounts in light of some alternative explanations for the intensity bias.     

The past thirty years of emotion research: appraisal and beyond

ABSTRACT

For this Special Issue, I highlight the past and present importance of appraisal theory as well as the challenges to its status as a total theory of emotions from the other functions of emotions: associative learning, self-regulation and social communication. This theoretical view applies both to emotion research in general and the specific fields of my interest in the emotions of moral judgment and intergroup processes. Methodologically, developments in analyses of large and more naturally occurring data sets will give an opportunity to square psychology’s structural models of discrete emotions with the more complicated reality that exists. Both for the field and for individual researchers picking up the study of emotions, my advice is to pay special attention to measures, their assumptions and their context.     

Associations of coping and appraisal styles with emotion regulation during preadolescence

We investigated the associations of appraisal and coping styles with emotion regulation in a community sample of preadolescents (N = 196, 9-12 years of age), with appraisal, coping styles, and emotion regulation measured at a single time point. In a previous study, we identified five frustration and four anxiety emotion regulation profiles based on children’s physiological, behavioral, and self-reported reactions to emotion-eliciting tasks. In this study, preadolescents’ self-reported appraisal and coping styles were associated with those emotion regulation profiles. Overall, findings revealed that children who were more effective at regulating their emotions during the emotion-eliciting tasks had higher levels of positive appraisal and active coping when dealing with their own problems. Conversely, children who regulated their emotions less effectively had higher levels of threat appraisal and avoidant coping.     

The appraisal basis of anger occurrence and intensity revisited

In a diary study we examined the relation between anger appraisals on the one hand, and the occurrence and intensity of anger experiences in frustrating situations on the other hand. The appraisals of frustration, other presence, other-accountability, and hostile intention are shown to be jointly sufficient for the occurrence of anger experience. Absence of one or more of these appraisals further results in a smaller proportion of anger occurrences, in lower anger intensities, and in both within- and between-person differences in anger occurrence. These results are interpreted in terms of anger experience as a categorical phenomenon for which the jointly sufficient set of appraisals acts as a cognitive point of reference. Willingness to go for anger categorisations in appraisal patterns that deviate from this cognitive point of reference is, at least in part, subject to dispositional individual differences.     

Social anxiety and emotion regulation flexibility: considering emotion intensity and type as contextual factors

Background and objectives: Individuals with social anxiety disorder have often been considered inflexible in their emotion regulation. The aim of this study was to investigate emotion regulation flexibility in socially anxious individuals in response to two contextual factors, namely different levels of emotion intensity and emotion type.

Methods: A daily diary approach was employed, investigating emotion regulation (i.e., experiential avoidance, expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal) in college students scoring high (N?=?62; HSA) and low (N?=?52; LSA) on social anxiety.

Results: Results revealed that HSAs were found to use more experiential avoidance than LSAs, especially at higher levels of negative intensity. The use of this emotion regulation strategy appeared to be driven by guilt, nervousness, and sadness. There were no between-group differences concerning the other strategies in response to varying levels of emotional intensity.

Conclusions: Together, the results provide evidence for inflexible emotion regulation in HSAs, reflected in an unwillingness to experience negative emotions.     

From appraisal to emotion: Differences among unpleasant feelings

Recent research has indicated strong relations between people's appraisals of their circumstances and their emotional states. The present study examined these relations across a range of unpleasant situations in which subjects experienced complex emotional blends. Subjects recalled unpleasant experiences from their pasts that were associated with particular appraisals and described their appraisals and emotions during these experiences. Situations defined by particular appraisals along the human agency or situational control dimensions were reliably associated with different levels of anger, sadness, and guilt, as predicted. However, predicted differences in emotion were not observed for situations selected for appraisals along the certainty or attention dimensions. Most subjects reported experiencing blends of two or more emotions, and correlation/regression analyses indicated that even in the context of these blends, patterns of appraisal similar to those observed previously (Smith & Ellsworth, 1985, 1987) characterized the experience of the individual emotions. The regressions further indicated that appraisals along some dimensions were more important to the experience of particular emotions than were appraisals along other dimensions. Thesecentral appraisals are compared with the adaptive functions their associated emotions are believed to serve, and the implications of these findings are discussed.This research was supported in part by a Stanford University graduate fellowship and in part by a National Institute of Mental Health training grant to Craig Smith. Part of the writing was done while Phoebe Ellsworth was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and by the James McKeen Cattell Fund.     

The semantic structure of emotion words across languages is consistent with componential appraisal models of emotion

Appraisal theories of emotion, and particularly the Component Process Model, claim that the different components of the emotion process (action tendencies, physiological reactions, expressions, and feeling experiences) are essentially driven by the results of cognitive appraisals and that the feeling component constitutes a central integration and representation of these processes. Given the complexity of the proposed architecture, comprehensive experimental tests of these predictions are difficult to perform and to date are lacking. Encouraged by the “lexical sedimentation” hypothesis, here we propose an indirect examination of the compatibility of the theoretical assumptions with the semantic structure of a set of major emotion words as measured in a cross-language and cross-cultural study. Specifically, we performed a secondary analysis of the large-scale data set with ratings of affective features covering all components of the emotion process for 24 emotion words in 27 countries, constituting profiles of emotion-specific appraisals, action tendencies, physiological reactions, expressions, and feeling experiences. The results of a series of hierarchical regression analyses to examine the prediction of the theoretical model are highly consistent with the claim that appraisal patterns determine the structure of the response components, which in turn predict central dimensions of the feeling component.     

Acute exercise suppresses judgments of facial emotion intensity

The ability to recognize others’ facial expressions is critical to the social communication of affective states. The present work examined how transient states of high physiological arousal during aerobic exercise influence recognizing and rating morphed facial expressions. Participants exercised at either a low or high work rate. While exercising and then during cool-down and rest periods, participants performed a version of the morphed faces task that involved animated faces changing into or away from five target affective states (happy, surprise, sadness, anger, and disgust); they were asked to stop the animation when the face first corresponded to a target state, and rate its emotional intensity. Results demonstrated no differences in animation stop data, but overall lower ratings of perceived emotion intensity during high versus low work rate exercise; these effects dissipated through cool-down and rest periods. Results highlight important interactions between physiological states and processing emotional information.     

Better together: a unified perspective on appraisal and emotion regulation

ABSTRACT

Advances in our understanding of appraisal processes and emotion regulation have been two of the most important contributions of research on cognition and emotion in recent decades. Interestingly, however, progress in these two areas has been less mutually informative than one might expect or desire. To help remedy this situation, we provide an integration of appraisal theory and the process model of emotion regulation by describing parallel, interacting and iterative systems for emotion generation and emotion regulation. Outputs of the emotion generation system are perceived by the emotion regulation system, and emotion regulation strategies then modulate emotion by intervening at specific stages of the emotion generation system, ultimately changing appraisal dimensions. We hope that our unified perspective will encourage and guide future research at the interface of cognition and emotion.