Cognitive appraisals and emotional experience: Further evidence

Abstract

The present study uses methods derived from Smith and Ellsworth (1985) to investigate the degree to which emotions are associated with distinctive patterns of cognitive appraisal. Subjects described past situations in which they had unambiguously experienced each of eight emotions: guilt. embarrassment, shame. anxiety. anger, hope. joy, and pride. These situations were then rated on each of 10 appraisal scales: unpleasantness. unexpectedness of events from own and from others' perspective, inconsistency of own actions with own and others' behavioural standards, benefit to self and to others, own and others' responsibility for events. and degree to which events were beyond anyone's control. Analysis of these ratings revealed distinctive patterns of appraisal associated with the eight emotions. including discriminable patterns for guilt and shame—emotions that were not distinguished in terms of the appraisal dimensions recovered by Smith and Ellsworth. Thus the present study demonstrates that appraisal dimensions (such as unexpectedness, benefit, and inconsistency with behavioural standards) in addition than those used by Smith and Ellsworth have utility in distinguishing among 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.     

Positively versus negatively charged moral emotion expectancies in adolescence: The role of situational context and the developing moral self

The study analyses adolescents' positively charged versus negatively charged moral emotion expectancies. Two hundred and five students (M= 14.83 years, SD= 2.21) participated in an interview depicting various situations in which a moral norm was either regarded or transgressed. Emotion expectancies were assessed for specific emotions (pride, guilt) as well as for overall strength and valence. In addition, self‐importance of moral values was measured by a questionnaire. Results revealed that positively charged emotion expectancies were more pronounced in contexts of prosocial action than in the context of moral transgressions, whereas the opposite was true for negatively charged emotions. At the same time, expectations of guilt and pride were substantially related to the self‐importance of moral values.     

Nice or smart? Task relevance of self-characteristics moderates interpersonal projection

Two studies investigated the impact of trait relevance to a specific task on people's projection of their characteristics onto a cooperative partner. We either measured (Study 1) or manipulated (Study 2) the relevance of a trait to a specific cooperative task. In both studies, participants first rated themselves on a list of traits. Then they imagined completing a cooperative task with an unknown partner. Finally, they rated the partner on the same list of traits. In Study 1, we found partner ratings to be positively influenced by self ratings and the idiosyncratic measure of trait relevance. In Study 2, participants rated the self and the partner on competence and warmth traits while completing an intellectual or a social task. We found partner ratings to be positively influenced by self ratings more on competence than on warmth in the intellectual task, but more on warmth than on competence in the social task. These results suggest that people project onto others in a way that maximizes their chances to succeed in cooperation.     

Positive academic emotions moderate the relationship between self‐regulation and academic achievement

Background. Research has shown how academic emotions are related to achievement and to cognitive/motivational variables that promote achievement. Mediated models have been proposed to account for the relationships among academic emotions, cognitive/motivational variables, and achievement, and research has supported such mediated models, particularly with negative emotions. Aims. The study tested the hypotheses: (1) self‐regulation and the positive academic emotions of enjoyment and pride are positive predictors of achievement; and (2) enjoyment and pride both moderate the relationship between self‐regulation and achievement. Sample. Participants were 1,345 students enrolled in various trigonometry classes in one university. Methods. Participants answered the Academic Emotions Questionnaire‐Math (Pekrun, Goetz, & Frenzel, 2005) and a self‐regulation scale (Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, & McKeachie, 1991) halfway through their trigonometry class. The students’ final grades in the course were regressed to self‐regulation, positive emotions, and the interaction terms to test the moderation effects. Results and Conclusions. Enjoyment and pride were both positive predictors of grades; more importantly, both moderated the relationship between self‐regulation and grades. For students who report higher levels of both positive emotions, self‐regulation was positively associated with grades. However, for those who report lower levels of pride, self‐regulation was not related to grades; and, for those who reported lower levels of enjoyment, self‐regulation was negatively related to grades. The results are discussed in terms of how positive emotions indicate positive appraisals of task/outcome value, and thus enhance the positive links between cognitive/motivational variables and learning.     

Social Emotions in Children's Human Figure Drawings: Drawing Shame,Pride and Jealousy

The study examines children's ability to convey social – as opposed to basic – emotions in their human figure drawings. One hundred children aged 4‐, 6‐ and 8‐years were asked to draw a person experiencing shame, pride, jealousy, happiness, sadness and fear as well as a baseline figure ‘feeling nothing’. Drawings were rated in terms of (i) overall emotional expressiveness and (ii) variety and types (face, body/posture and context) of graphic cues used to convey emotion. The effect of age on overall expressiveness and use of these graphic cues was also investigated. The results showed that drawings depicting social emotions were rated as less expressive and presented fewer graphic cues than those conveying basic emotions. Children's developing ability to depict pride, shame and jealousy was largely driven by an increased use of contextual cues in their human figure drawings. As regards the effect of age, it was found that 6‐ and 8‐years old produced more expressive drawings containing a larger range of graphic cues than the 4‐year olds. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The situational antecedents of pride and happiness: Developmental and domain differences

This study examines whether young children can differentiate between the situational antecedents of happiness and pride and the effect of the type of situation on the attribution of pride. One hundred and fifty 7‐, 9‐ and 11‐year‐olds were asked to rate the extent to which two types of situations would elicit a protagonist's feelings of happiness and pride. Happy situations were expected to elicit happiness only, e.g. because the protagonist received a gift — a desirable result, but beyond his/her personal control. Achievement situations were expected to elicit both happiness and pride, e.g. because the protagonist won an award — a desirable and beneficial outcome for the agent which (s)he was responsible for bringing about. If the children could differentiate between the situational determinants of happiness and pride, they would be expected to give high ratings for pride in achievement situations only. To examine the effect of the type of situation on children's ratings for pride, discretionary moral situations were introduced in which the protagonist was performing a moral act for the benefit of a third person without personal cost (helping an old lady carry her shopping bags) or with cost (giving a sandwich to a hungry child). The results of the study revealed that only the 11‐year‐olds were able to fully differentiate between the two emotions. The type of situation affected children's ratings for pride. Children attributed less pride to the protagonist in moral situations, particularly in the cost condition, than to the protagonist in achievement situations.     

An interactional approach to the study of personality and emotion

The purpose of the present study was to examine the relation between personality and emotional feelings within ecologically valid settings Nineteen subjects rated their emotions in a wide variety of work, recreation, social, and alone situations sampled over a 30-day period They were also administered the Personality Research Form and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Although theoretically predictable relations were found between certain personality traits and specific emotions averaged across situations, it was not until we distinguished chosen from imposed situations that the most meaningful results were obtained Both temperament and nontemperament personality traits were found to be related to specific emotions Implications of the present findings for research on situation selection and the status of personality traits are discussed     

The emotional self: Embodiment,reflexivity, and emotion regulation

Current dominant trends in the biological and psychological sciences tend to put emphasis on the role of the brain, cognition, and consciousness in realising emotional states and attempting to regulate them. In this article, I suggest an alternative approach with the idea that emotions emerge within social relations and give meaning and value to the situations in which we are located. Humans are understood as embodied emotional selves for who thought and emotion are intertwined. However, individuals can get caught in obsessive and compulsive thinking and feeling traps where the self loses touch with its emotions, and because of this also loses contact with the social situation and the ability to skilfully navigate it. In such circumstances, the self gets overwhelmed by emotion and loses its poise in the social setting. I consider Buddhist meditation as a technique through which people can develop a more reflexive emotional self, where reflexivity is not about control of emotion but owning one's feelings and being able to respond more sensitively and skilfully in various situations.     

Emotions are not always contagious: Longitudinal spreading of self-pride and group pride in homogeneous and status-differentiated groups

The members of task groups are emotionally more similar to each other than to others outside the group; yet, little is known about the conditions under which this emotional similarity emerges. In two longitudinal studies, we tested the idea that emotions only spread when they contain information that is relevant to all group members. We compared the spreading of group pride (relevant) with self-pride (not relevant). The first study followed emotions in 68 task groups (N = 295) across 4 moments. Multilevel cross-lagged path analyses showed that group members mutually influenced each other's group pride, but not self-pride. The second study followed emotions in 27 task groups (N = 195) across 3 moments in time. Longitudinal social network analyses showed that group members adjusted their group pride, but not their self-pride, to members they perceived to be more influential. Findings from both studies are consistent with a social referencing account of emotion spreading.     

Beliefs about power and its relation to emotional experience: a comparison of Japan, France, Germany, and the United States

This research examined the concept of power in Japan, France, Germany, and the United States, as well as beliefs about the emotions persons in power tend to elicit in others and about powerful people's regulation (specifically, inhibition) of certain emotions. Definitions of power were assessed by examining the importance of two main components: control over self versus other and freedom of action vis-à-vis social norms. Beliefs about both positive (pride, admiration) and negative (jealousy, contempt) emotions were measured. Analyses revealed that the concept of power differed across countries and that the definitions of power as well as country of origin significantly predicted beliefs about the emotions that are elicited in others by powerful people and also the regulation of expression of emotion by powerful people.     

Anxiety,Compassion and Pride. How Emotions Elicited by the Government’s Handling of Covid-19 Influences Health-Promoting Behavior

This article explores how emotions connected to the Government’s handling of the Covid-19 outbreak in Sweden relates to behaviors to stop the spread of the virus, and which emotions functions as mediators in this relationship. The Swedish approach to handling the outbreak greatly differed from how many other Western European countries handled the situation and thus makes an important case to study. In a large representative survey (N = 2449), we found that satisfaction with how the Government handled the situation was related to more positive and less negative emotions. Anxiety, compassion and pride mediated the effect of satisfaction on compliance with the national recommendations such that anxiety and compassion increased compliance, while pride decreased it. Importantly though, satisfaction increased compassion and pride, but only compassion led to more compliant behaviors. In fact, satisfaction was indirectly related to less compliant behaviors via anxiety and pride. Shame mediated the effect on the tendency to wear face masks, a behavior that was explicitly not endorsed by the Swedish Public Health Agency. We speculate if the face mask, which was intensely debated, became a politicized symbol of dissatisfaction with the Swedish approach. In sum, it seems that individuals who were dissatisfied with how the government handled the Covid-19 outbreak were in fact engaging more in health-promotional behaviors to stop the spread of the virus.     

Deservingness and emotions: Testing a structural model that relates discrete emotions to the perceived deservingness of positive or negative outcomes

A study is described that tested a model (Feather in Eur Rev Soc Psychol 17:38–73, 2006) relating emotions to the appraisal of outcome deservingness for self or other person. Outcome deservingness was assumed to depend on the evaluative structure of action/outcome relations (Feather in Values, achievement, and justice: studies in the psychology of deservingness. Kluwer/Plenum Publishers, New York, 1999b). The study tested predictions about relations between this structure and the emotions of pleasure, admiration, pride, resentment, anger, sadness, sympathy, guilt, regret, disappointment, and surprise. The study used a hypothetical scenario involving an applicant for a position in an organization where the applicant could either be other or self. Results that focused on planned comparisons and the action by focus interactions supported the analysis for both the positive outcome and the negative outcome conditions and they were consistent with the hypothesis that the appraisal of outcome deservingness would mediate at least in part the type of emotion that was reported when a positive or negative outcome followed a positive or negative action. Results were discussed in relation to the social psychology of justice and the emotions.     

On the context dependence of emotion displays: Perceptions of gold medalists’ expressions of pride

In spite of various claims for cross-cultural differences in the experience of pride, studies on the expression of pride have revealed few cross-cultural differences. Five studies using archival data from Olympic and national championships do show cross-cultural differences in the expression of pride and other positive emotions in pride-eliciting contexts, contingent on the social context of the expression, notably the in-group or out-group status of the audience. Chinese gold medalists were perceived to express less pride than American medalists when outperforming in-group competitors; when outperforming out-group members, however, no or smaller cross-cultural differences were observed. These findings are important because they indicate that cultural norms about emotion expression may be activated only in situations in which they serve a function in coordinating people's behaviour.     

Perfectionism and Self‐conscious Emotions in British and Japanese Students: Predicting Pride and Embarrassment after Success and Failure

Regarding self‐conscious emotions, studies have shown that different forms of perfectionism show different relationships with pride, shame, and embarrassment depending on success and failure. What is unknown is whether these relationships also show cultural variations. Therefore, we conducted a study investigating how self‐oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism predicted pride and embarrassment after success and failure by comparing 363 British and 352 Japanese students. Students were asked to respond to a set of scenarios where they imagined achieving either perfect (success) or flawed (failure) results. In both British and Japanese students, self‐oriented perfectionism positively predicted pride after success and embarrassment after failure, whereas socially prescribed perfectionism predicted embarrassment after success and failure. Moreover, in Japanese students, socially prescribed perfectionism positively predicted pride after success and self‐oriented perfectionism negatively predicted pride after failure. The findings have implications for our understanding of perfectionism, indicating that the perfectionism–pride relationship not only varies between perfectionism dimensions but may also show cultural variations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Inducing an interpretation bias changes self-imagery: a preliminary investigation

Prior work suggests that variations in self-imagery can influence the emotional interpretations people make about social situations. The current experiment investigated the converse possibility: that inducing an inferential bias can change the content of self-related images. The effects of repeated practice in accessing either negative or positive social outcomes was tested by having participants report on self-images generated during subsequent experience with ambiguous social situations. Participants and independent judges rated the content of participants’ self-images as being more negative after prior practice in accessing negative rather than positive social outcomes. Furthermore, participants who practiced accessing negative outcomes rated their anticipated anxiety in an imagined stressful social situation as being greater, and their expected social performance as poorer than participants in the positive outcome group. Groups did not differ in state anxiety levels when making their ratings, so it is unlikely that any observed differences between groups can be attributed to mood effects. We suggest that this finding is consistent with the hypothesis that inferential biases and content of self-images can interact with each other and may together serve to maintain social anxiety.     

SELF‐DECEPTION ABOUT EMOTION

In this paper, I address an ignored topic in the literature on self‐deception—instances in which one is self‐deceived about their emotions. Most discussions of emotion and self‐deception address either the contributory role of emotion to instances of self‐deception involving beliefs or assume what I argue is an outdated view of emotion according to which emotions just are beliefs or some other type of propositional attitude. In order to construct an account of self‐deception about emotion, I draw a distinction between two variants of self‐deception about emotion: cognitively motivated self‐deception and phenomenologically motivated self‐deception. After providing an account of each variant, I discuss the importance of the role that perception plays in cases of self‐deception about emotion. I conclude with a comment on the relevance of this discussion for contemporary debates in moral theory.     

The self and others in the experience of pride

Pride is seen as both a self-conscious emotion as well as a social emotion. These categories are not mutually exclusive, but have brought forth different ideas about pride as either revolving around the self or as revolving around one’s relationship with others. Current measures of pride do not include intrapersonal elements of pride experiences. Social comparisons, which often cause experiences of pride, contain three elements: the self, the relationship between the self and another person, and the other person. From the literature on pride, we distilled three related elements; perceptions and feelings of self-inflation, other-distancing, and other-devaluation. In four studies, we explored whether these elements were present in pride experiences. We did so at an implicit (Experiment 1; N?=?218) and explicit level (Experiment 2; N?=?125), in an academic setting with in vivo (Experiment 3; N?=?203) and imagined pride experiences (Experiment 4; N?=?126). The data consistently revealed that the experience of pride is characterised by self-inflation, not by other-distancing nor other-devaluation.     

The effect of others' influence, effort, and ability attributions on emotions in achievement and affiliative situations.

In this examination of how attributions and types of situation influence emotions, 46 American undergraduates completed a questionnaire consisting of 12 vignettes that varied according to content, outcome, and attribution. After reading each vignette, they indicated how they would feel in the situation described. In a second experiment, 27 Finnish undergraduates participated in an identical procedure. In both experiments, subjects felt more pride and happiness after they attributed a successful achievement to effort or ability rather than to others' influence. Attributions of affiliative success did not influence emotions. Subjects felt the most shame and guilt after they attributed achievement failure to lack of effort, and they felt the least negative emotions after they attributed affiliative failure to lack of effort.