Appraisal theory has become one of the most active aproaches in the domain of emotion psychology. The appraisal process consists of the subjective evaluation that occurs during the individual's encounter with significant events in the environment, determining the nature of the emotional reaction and experience. The organism's interpretation of events and situations elicits and differentiates its emotional responses, although the exact processes involved and the limits of the theory are still a matter of debate and are currently (...) the object of active research. This volume is intended to become the primary source of information on appraisal for all those interested in emotion, from beginning graduate students to accomplished researchers in emotion psychology. (shrink)

Regulating affective responses to acute stress has the potential to improve health, performance, and well-being outcomes. Using the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat as an organizing framework, we review how appraisals inform affective responses and highlight research that demonstrates how appraisals can be used as regulatory tools. Arousal reappraisal, specifically, instructs individuals on the adaptive benefits of stress arousal so that arousal is conceptualized as a coping resource. By reframing the meaning of signs of arousal that accompany stress, it (...) is possible to break the link between stressful situations, and malignant physiological responses and experiences of negative affect. Applications of arousal reappraisal for academic contexts and clinical science, and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

Appraisal theories have described elaborate mechanisms underlying the elicitation of emotion at the psychological-cognitive level, but typically do not integrate neuroscientific concepts and findings. At the same time, theoretical developments in appraisal theory have been pretty much ignored by researchers studying the neuroscience of emotion. We feel that a stronger integration of these two literatures would be highly profitable for both sides. Here we outline a blueprint of the “appraising brain.” To this end, we review neuroimaging research investigating (...) the processing of major appraisal variables, and sketch a neuro-cognitive process model of appraisal with a special emphasis on the chronometry and the recursive aspect of emotional evaluation. We hope that this contribution will stimulate more hypothesis-driven research on the neuroscience of appraisal. (shrink)

Appraisal and constructivist theories of emotion both emphasize that emotions are not modular phenomena, but are constructed from more basic psychological parts. In the scientific debate, differences between the two approaches are sometimes overplayed, by classifying appraisal theories as “natural kinds” models, and sometimes underplayed, by basically merging them into constructivist accounts. The aim of this contribution is to illustrate some similarities and some differences between contemporary appraisal and constructivist approaches, and to highlight the fact that (...) class='Hi'>appraisal theory has indeed already confronted the idea of construction in the elicitation of emotion. In doing so, I want to argue that, while there is a distinction between appraisal and constructivist camps, it is not as stark as one might think, even though the names of the “ingredients” of emotions may differ. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus that the elicitation and differentiation of emotions can best be understood as the result of the subjective appraisal of the significance of events for individuals. The present paper addresses the process of appraisal, hitherto neglected; particularly the postulate that appraisal consists of a fixed sequence of stimulus evaluation checks, as proposed by the component process model of emotion (Scherer, 1984, 1993b). It is suggested that indirect evidence pertinent to the order assumption, which (...) is an essential aspect of the sequence hypothesis, can be obtained via the study of recognition-of-emotion-situation scenarios that have been segmented according to individual appraisal criteria or dimensions. The hypothesis that the presentation of these segments in the predicted sequence (as compared to a random sequence) will result in a faster and more accurate identification of the respective emotions is supported by data from three experiments. Potential alternative explanations are discussed. (shrink)

Personality has widely been documented to play an important role in the cognitive appraisal and stress processes. Emerging studies highlight the stress mindset as a new concept that could add to the understanding of individual differences in stress experiences. This study aimed to examine the relative contribution of Big Five personality dimensions and stress mindset in accounting for measures of cognitive appraisals of stress among the competing athletes. The study was conducted on a sample of 125 collegiate athletes (...) of both genders who actively compete in sport. All the participants were regular undergraduate or graduate students at the Faculty of Kinesiology of the University of Zagreb. A questionnaire including demographic information about athletes and their sport career, stress mindset measure, situation-specific cognitive appraisal scale, sources of stress scale, and personality scale measured by IPIP-50 was administered in an online form using the Google Forms platform. Multivariate hierarchical regression procedures resulted in somewhat different predictor structures accounting for cognitive appraisals of threat, loss, and challenge, used as criterion variables. The set of Big Five personality dimensions and stress mindset measure proved to have a significant additive contribution to the explanation of each of the three cognitive appraisal criterion variances. The study results support the current body of literature suggesting a unique role of the stress mindset construct in explaining individual differences in cognitive stress appraisal among athletes above and beyond general personality dimensions. (shrink)

A key consequence of globalisation is the integrative approach to reality whereby emphasis is placed on interdependence. Religion being an expression of human culture is equally affected by this cultural revolution. The main objective of this paper is to examine how religious affiliation, among Christians, influences attitudes towards the application of psychological sciences to the assuagement of human suffering. The sociological theory of structural functionalism was deployed to explain attitudinal appraisal. Ethnographic methodology, through quantitative analysis of administered questionnaire, was (...) also used. The study reveals that religious tenets largely shape attitudinal appraisal and redefine the borders of globalisation’s metanarratives. (shrink)

Models of cognitive vulnerability claim that depressive symptoms arise as a result of an interaction between negative affect and cognitive reactions, in the form of dysfunctional attitudes and negative inferential style. We present a model that complements this approach by focusing on the appraisal processes that elicit and differentiate everyday episodes of emotional experience, arguing that individual differences in appraisal patterns can foster negative emotional experiences related to depression (e.g., sadness and despair). In particular, dispositional appraisal (...) biases facilitating the elicitation of these emotions more frequently and more intensely. This, in turn, is likely to have a negative influence on cognitive processing and emotion regulation in general. (shrink)

This article does not intend to actually valuate intangible assets but focuses to investigate the relative value distribution of corporate intangible assets, and this links closely to the concept and application of value drivers. This is because we believe that drivers or attributes of the value significantly determine how the virtual value of these intangibles can be created for companies. We apply the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to the appraising process of intangible assets. The AHP method can mainly sort the (...) non-financial value drivers in order according to their weighted contributions. Therefore, the key purpose of this article is to develop a tentative model for the evaluation of intangible assets, which helps business to correctly appraise corporate value ratios and avoid bias due to mainly relying on financial statements when measuring an entity’s value. In addition, in view of the significant proportion of intangible assets over total assets in high-technology industries, this research, then, uses six industries in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan, as its research objects in order to test the applicability of its model, as well as exploring the value weights of intangible assets and its evaluation among different technology industries. Besides, the empirical result of this article is mainly to support business appraisal and thus improves the effectiveness of value-based management. (shrink)

The appraisal theory formulations posited in this special section consider the appraisal process to afford flexibility to emotional responding by the malleability of how people appraise events. I argue that not only the way in which events are appraised but also the way in which appraisals drive changes in other emotion components is characterized by flexibility across persons and context. Accounting for such flexibility is crucial for the further development of appraisal theories and their application to other (...) domains. (shrink)

Kagan mistakes the emphasis on action readiness in emotions for emphasis on action. He moreover neglects the appraisal processes that form the origins of emotional feeling and other responses.

Construal-level theory emphasizes that representing events at greater spatial, temporal, social, or hypothetical distance results in processing information at high construal levels (more conceptual, abstract). We posit that psychological distance and construal level are somewhat separable constructs, and can have different effects on emotion, and therefore, emotion regulation. We argue that psychological distance influences emotional appraisal, such that increasing distance results in lower emotion intensity, which can be leveraged to down-regulate emotions. However, we consider construal level a mindset, which (...) can occur with either high or low psychological distance. Furthermore, we argue that compared with psychological distance, construal level has a more nuanced relationship with emotion, and changing construal level for the purpose of changing emotion also requires considering the construal level of one's emotion-regulation goals. (shrink)

Emotional processing and episodic memory are closely related throughout childhood development. With respect to emotional episodic memory, available evidence shows that the consolidation of information is accompanied by an arousal that generates longer duration and persistence of the memory representations. In the case of early stages of development (i.e., first 5 years), it is less clear how these associations emerge and are modulated by individual and environmental factors. In this study, 116 4- to 5-years old Argentinean children from different socio-environmental (...) contexts (i.e., favorable or unfavorable living conditions at home), performed a task of visual emotional memory in which they observed a set of 15 images with variable emotional valences (negative, neutral, and positive). The child’s task was to appraise each image using one of the following three possible valences: (a) drawings of faces with smiles (positive valence), (b) drawings of faces with tears and round mouth with edges down (negative valence), or (c) drawings of faces with horizontal mouth (neutral valence). Five years-old children exhibited greater accuracy appraisal. Individual differences in emotional accuracy appraisal allowed us to observe different performances in free recall of negative visual images. Accuracy appraisal did not vary between children with respect to gender, living conditions at home, or language ability. Seven to ten days after the emotional appraisal children were asked to tell the experimenter all the images they remembered (variables of interest: free recall of negative, positive, or neutral images). Results showed individual (age) differences. Specifically, 5-years-old children evoked more images than 4-years-old children. These findings contribute to the understanding of emotional memory in early developmental stages and raise the need to include emotional appraisal in the assessment of episodic memory. (shrink)

Appraisal theories of emotion have had a strong impact on the development of theory and experimental research in the domain of the affective sciences. While there is generally a high degree of convergence between theorists in this tradition, some central issues are open to debate. In this contribution three issues have been chosen for discussion: (a) varieties of relevance detection, (b) varieties of valence appraisal, and (c) sequential-cumulative effects of appraisal results. In addressing these issues, new theoretical (...) ideas are suggested and an update of recent research on the sequence of appraisal processes is provided. Special emphasis is placed on nonverbal signatures of appraisal processes. (shrink)

Critics of appraisal theory have difficulty accepting appraisal (with its constructive flavor) as an automatic process, and hence as a potential cause of most emotions. In response, some appraisal theorists have argued that appraisal was never meant as a causal process but as a constituent of emotional experience. Others have argued that appraisal is a causal process, but that it can be either rule-based or associative, and that the associative variant can be automatic. This article (...) first proposes empirically investigating whether rule-based appraisal can also be automatic and then proposes investigating the automatic nature of constructive (instead of rule-based) appraisal because the distinction between rule-based and associative is problematic. Finally, it discusses experiments that support the view that constructive appraisal can be automatic. (shrink)

The performance appraisal process is increasingly seen as a key link between employee behaviour and an organization’s strategic objectives. Unfortunately, performance reviews often fail to change how people work, and dissatisfaction with the appraisal process has been associated with general job dissatisfaction, lower organizational commitment, and increased intentions to quit. Recent research has identified a number of factors related to reactions to performance appraisals in general and appraisal satisfaction in particular. Beyond the appraisal outcome itself, researchers (...) have found that appraisal reactions are affected by perceptions of fairness and the relationship between the supervisor and the employee. To explain the relationships among these factors, the present article proposes a moral cognition perspective. We suggest that employees judge a performance appraisal from the perspective of its moral justifiability, and that appraisal reactions will be determined, at least in part, by the perceived moral justifiability of the process. The proposal was supported by results from a survey of government employees using measures of performance ratings, leader–member exchange, perceived utility, and organizational justice. (shrink)

This article suggests that methodological and conceptual advancements in affective sciences militate in favor of adopting an appraisal-driven componential approach to further investigate the emotional brain. Here we propose to operationalize this approach by distinguishing five functional networks of the emotional brain: the elicitation network, the expression network, the autonomic reaction network, the action tendency network, and the feeling network, and discuss these networks in the context of the affective neuroscience literature. We also propose that further investigating the “appraising (...) brain” is the royal road to better understand the elicitation network, and may be key to revealing the neural causal mechanisms underlying the emotion process as a whole. (shrink)

Emotional expressions constitute a rich source of information. Integrating theorizing on attribution, appraisal processes, and the use of emotions as social information, we examined how emotional expressions influence attributions of agency and responsibility under conditions of ambiguity. Three vignette studies involving different scenarios indicate that participants used information about others’ emotional expressions to make sense of ambiguous social situations. Expressions of regret fueled inferences that the expresser was responsible for an adverse situation, whereas expressions of anger fueled inferences (...) that someone else was responsible. Also, expressions of anger were interpreted as a sign of injustice, and expressions of disappointment increased prosocial intentions (i.e., to help the expresser). The results show that emotional expressions can help people understand ambiguous social situations by informing attributions that correspond with each emotion’s associated appraisal structures. The findings advance understanding of the ways in which emotional expressions help individuals understand and coordinate social life. (shrink)

Appraisal theories of emotion have two fundamental assumptions: (a) that there are regularities to be discovered between situations and components of emotional episodes, and (b) that the influence of these situations on these components is causally mediated by a mental process called appraisal. Appraisal theories come in different flavors, proposing different to-be-explained phenomena and different underlying mechanisms for the influence of appraisal on the other components.

This paper explores the conduct of performance appraisals of nurses in a New Zealand hospital, and how fairness is perceived in such appraisals. In the health sector, performance appraisals of medical staff play a key role in implementing clinical governance, which, in turn, is critical to containing health care costs and ensuring quality patient care. Effective appraisals depend on employees perceiving their own appraisals to be fair both in terms of procedure and interaction with their respective appraiser. We examine qualitative (...) data from interviews and focus groups, involving 22 nurses in a single department, to determine whether perceived injustices impact on the effective implementation of the appraisal system. Our results suggest that particular issues had been causing some sense of injustice, and most of these were procedural. Potential solutions focus on greater formalisation of the performance appraisal process, and more training for appraisers and appraisees. (shrink)

According to the Appraisal-Tendency Framework (Han, Lerner, & Keltner, 2007), certainty-associated emotions increase risk taking compared with uncertainty-associated emotions. To date, this general effect has only been shown in static judgement and decision-making paradigms; therefore, the present study tested the effect of certainty on risk taking in a sequential decision-making task. We hypothesised that the effect would be reversed due to the kind of processing involved, as certainty is considered to encourage heuristic processing that takes into account the emotional (...) cues arising from previous decisions, whereas uncertainty leads to more systematic processing. One hundred and one female participants were induced to feel one of three emotions (film clips) before performing a decision-making task involving risk (Game of Dice Task; Brand et al., 2005). As expected, the angry and happy participants (certainty-associated emotions) were more likely than the fearful participants (uncertainty-associated emotion) to make safe decisions (vs. risky decisions). (shrink)

Social learning is likely to include affective processes: it is necessary for newcomers to discover what value to attach to objects, persons, and events in a given social environment. This learning relies largely on the evaluation of others’ emotional expressions. This study has two objectives. Firstly, we compare two closely related concepts that are employed to describe the use of another person’s appraisal to make sense of a given situation: social appraisal and social referencing. We contend that (...) social referencing constitutes a type of social appraisal. Secondly, we introduce the concept of affective social learning with the hope that it may help to discriminate the different ways in which emotions play a critical role in the processes of socialization. (shrink)

Many scientific models are non-representational in that they refer to merely possible processes, background conditions and results. The paper shows how such non-representational models can be appraised, beyond the weak role that they might play as heuristic tools. Using conceptual distinctions from the discussion of how-possibly explanations, six types of models are distinguished by their modal qualities of their background conditions, model processes and model results. For each of these types, an actual model example – drawn from economics, (...) biology, psychology or sociology – is discussed. For each case, contexts and purposes are identified in which the use of such a model offers a genuine opportunity to learn – i.e. justifies changing one’s confidence in a hypothesis about the world. These cases then offer novel justifications for modelling practices that fall between the cracks of standard representational accounts of models. (shrink)

Many scientific models lack an established representation relation to actual targets and instead refer to merely possible processes, background conditions, and results. This article shows how such models can be appraised. On the basis of the discussion of how-possibly explanations, five types of learning opportunities are distinguished. For each of these types, an example—from economics, biology, psychology, and sociology—is discussed. Contexts and purposes are identified in which the use of a model offers a genuine opportunity to learn. These learning (...) opportunities offer novel justifications for modeling practices that fall between the cracks of standard representationalist appraisals of models. (shrink)

Appraisal theories of emotion generally presuppose that emotions are “directed at” various items. They also hold that emotions have motivational properties. However, although it coheres well with their views, they have yet to seriously develop the idea that the function of emotional direction is to guide those properties. I argue that this “guidance hypothesis” can open up a promising new field of research in emotion theory. But I also argue that before appraisal theorists can take full advantage of (...) it, they must drop their further assumption that to determine an emotion's direction, one need only retrace the process that caused it. Contrary to this “retracing view,” I argue for an “independence thesis”: directed emotions are produced by two functionally independent sub-processes. The first, “affect-causation,” functions in part to produce a state with certain motivational properties given certain representations. The second, “affect-direction,” has the function of optimally guiding those motivational properties by associating them with representations that may properly be quite dissimilar from the causal ones. By provisionally adopting the independence thesis and empirically testing the guidance hypothesis, I argue that appraisal theorists stand a good chance of significantly increasing the explanatory power of their theories. (shrink)

Although the PASTOR model provides a comprehensive framework to study resilience, it faces some challenges. First, some higher-order concepts may be difficult to model in the laboratory. Second, defining resilience as an absence of pathology might be conceptually restrictive. Finally, the proposal that the severity of the event is associated to different appraisal mechanisms needs further evidence.

The counseling process involves attention, emotional perception, cognitive appraisal, and decision-making. This study aimed to investigate cognitive appraisal and the associated emotional processes when reading short therapists' statements of motivational interviewing (MI). Thirty participants with work injuries were classified into the pre-contemplation (PC,n= 15) or readiness stage of the change group (RD,n= 15). The participants viewed MI congruent (MI-C), MI incongruent (MI-INC), or control phrases during which their electroencephalograms were captured. The results indicated significant Group × Condition (...) effects in the frontally oriented late positive complex (P600/LPC). The P600/LPC's amplitudes were more positive-going in the PC than in the RD group for the MI congruent statements. Within the PC group, the amplitudes of the N400 were significantly correlated (r= 0.607–0.649) with the participants' level of negative affect. Our findings suggest that the brief contents of MI statements alone can elicit late cognitive and emotional appraisal processes beyond semantic processing. (shrink)

Higher order cognitive processes, including ethical decision making (EDM), are influenced by the experiencing of discrete emotions. Recent research highlights the negative influence one such emotion, anger, has on EDM and its underlying processes. The mechanism, however, by which anger disrupts the EDM has not been investigated. The current study sought to discover whether cognitive appraisals of an emotion-evoking event are the driving mechanisms behind the influence of anger on EDM. One primary (goal obstacle) and one secondary (certainty) (...) appraisal of anger were examined. Study results suggest that appraisals of certainty are the driving mechanism behind the negative relationship between anger and EDM. Certainty appraisals led to less application of EDM-promoting strategies and more unethical social motives. Findings further highlight the value of investigating appraisals of emotional events, given their cognitive nature, for their potential effects on cognitive operations, such as EDM. Future directions and implications are discussed. (shrink)

Appraisal theories predict that emotional experiences are tightly linked to context appraisals. However, depressed people tend to perceive a variety of emotional events more negatively and stressfully and their emotional experience has been described as context insensitive. This raises the question: how different is the intensity of context appraisals from related emotion experiences among depressed relative to healthy people? Surprisingly, we do not know how cohesive intensity of context appraisals and emotional experiences are in depression. In this study, we (...) assessed differences in intensity of context appraisals and emotional experiences across 1634 daily events during three days within and between depressed participants (N = 41) and healthy controls (N = 33) using linear mixed models. Models compared intensities of stressfulness and unpleasantness appraisals to the intensity of negative affect, and intensity of pleasantness appraisals to the intensity of positive affect. Our findings partially supported our predictions of lower cohesiveness in depression: while intensities of pleasantness appraisals and positive affect were more alike among control participants, intensities of unpleasantness and stressfulness appraisals were more similar to the intensities of negative affect in the depressed group. Current work suggests that hedonic dysfunction in depression is possibly driven by a loosely tied positive context appraisal-emotion experience process. (shrink)

We investigated whether motivationally determined stimulus valence can be processed in an automatic way, as is assumed in many appraisal theories (e.g., Frijda, 1986, 1993; Lazarus, 1991; Scherer, 1993a). Whereas appraisal theorists typically use conscious self-report methods to investigate their assumptions, our experiments used indirect experimental methods that leave less room for deliberate, conscious reflections of the participants. Using variants of the affective priming and Simon paradigms, we demonstrated that intrinsically neutral, but wanted stimuli facilitated responses with a (...) positive valence, whereas intrinsically neutral, but unwanted stimuli facilitated negative responses. In addition, the second experiment proved to be supportive of another assumption made by appraisal theorists according to which a relation exits between different (automatic) outcomes of motivational appraisal (positive-negative) and different action tendencies (approach-withdrawal). (shrink)

The Component Process Model posits that attention is appraisal-driven rather than stimulus-driven and that the appraisal of relevance is of critical importance in such a mechanism. This means that any stimulus can attract attention or not depending on how relevant it is appraised. This hypothesis was tested in an implicit border similarity judgement task, in which thirsty participants were presented with bottles and vases that were respectively very relevant and weakly relevant to their goal to quench their thirst. (...) These stimuli were also presented to quenched participants for whom none of the stimuli was relevant. The findings support the idea that our attention is more likely to be appraisal-driven than stimulus-driven, since bottles produced an attentional interference in thirsty participants only. It was also observed that, even if vases were judged weakly relevant by thirsty participants, they produced an attentional interference compared to empty stimuli, which was not the case in the quenched participants group. The concept of goal relatedness was proposed as an explanation for this result, and methodological implications were also discussed. (shrink)

Individual differences related to emotions are typically represented as emotion traits. Although important, these descriptive models often do not address the psychological dynamics that underlie the trait. Appraisal theories of emotion assume that individual differences in emotions can be traced to differences in patterns of appraisal, but this hypothesis has largely gone untested. The present research explored whether individual differences in the emotion of interest, known as trait curiosity, consist of patterns of appraisal. After completing several measures (...) of trait curiosity, participants read complex poems (Experiment 1) or viewed simple and complex pictures (Experiment 2) and then gave ratings of interest and interest's appraisal components. The effect of trait curiosity on interest was fully mediated by appraisals. Multilevel analyses suggested that curious people differ in the amount of appraisal rather than in the kinds of appraisals relevant to interest. Appraisal theories can offer a process-oriented explanation of emotion traits that bridges state and trait emotional experience. (shrink)

While a corporate ethics program is expected to reduce employees’ unethical behavior, understanding the effects of the ethics program elements on reducing the unethical behavior is a crucial issue. This study aims to explore how a corporate ethics program with multiple control elements, including punishment, monitoring, internal reporting, code of ethics, ethics support service and ethics training, influence employees’ threat appraisal process, coping appraisal process and unethical behavior at workplaces. The data to verify proposed research hypotheses were collected (...) by administering questionnaire survey on four autonomous government organizations in Bangladesh. Research findings show that only punishment and monitoring have significantly negative relationships with unethical behavior. Monitoring and internal reporting have significantly positive relationships with threat appraisal. The code of ethics, ethics support service and ethics training are associated positively with coping appraisal. The mediation results reveal that coping appraisal mediates the relationship between ethics program elements and unethical behavior; but the mediation effects of threat appraisal are not significant. This study provides valuable insights into how a corporate ethics program with multiple control elements reduces employees’ unethical behavior as well as how employees’ threat and coping appraisal processes are related to the corporate ethics program and unethical behavior in organizations. (shrink)

Despite the upsurge of research on disgust, the implications of this research for the investigation of cultural pollution beliefs has yet to be adequately explored. In particular, the sensitivity of both disgust and pollution to a common set of elicitors suggests a common psychological basis, though several obstacles have prevented an integrative account, including methodological differences between the relevant disciplines. Employing a conciliatory framework that embraces both naturalistic and humanistic levels of explanation, this article examines the dynamic reciprocal process by (...) which contamination/contagion appraisals in individuals serve to shape—and are in turn shaped by—culture-specific pollution beliefs. This complex interrelationship is illustrated by examining ancient Near Eastern and modern ethnographic documentation of pollution beliefs, highlighting the underappreciated function of these pollution beliefs as folk theories for the spread of infectious disease. By evaluating how pollution beliefs shape contamination appraisals in individuals, it will be argued that cultural inheritance has played a much larger role in guiding disease avoidance behavior than has been previously recognized. (shrink)

Higher order cognitive processes, including ethical decision making (EDM), are influenced by the experiencing of discrete emotions. Recent research highlights the negative influence one such emotion, anger, has on EDM and its underlying processes. The mechanism, however, by which anger disrupts the EDM has not been investigated. The current study sought to discover whether cognitive appraisals of an emotion-evoking event are the driving mechanisms behind the influence of anger on EDM. One primary (goal obstacle) and one secondary (certainty) (...) appraisal of anger were examined. Study results suggest that appraisals of certainty are the driving mechanism behind the negative relationship between anger and EDM. Certainty appraisals led to less application of EDM-promoting strategies and more unethical social motives. Findings further highlight the value of investigating appraisals of emotional events, given their cognitive nature, for their potential effects on cognitive operations, such as EDM. Future directions and implications are discussed. (shrink)

The location of verbally reported feelings in a three-dimensional affective space is determined by the results of appraisal processes that elicit the respective states. One group of participants rated their evaluation of 59 pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) on a profile of nine appraisal criteria. Another group rated their affective reactions to the same pictures on the classic dimensions of affective meaning (valence, arousal, potency). The ratings on the affect dimensions correlate differentially with specific (...) appraisal ratings. These results can be interpreted as showing that the reactions to the IAPS pictures are predictably produced through appraisal of picture content. The relevance of the findings for emotion induction paradigms and for emotion theory in general is discussed. (shrink)

: The suffering of creatures experienced throughout evolutionary history provides some conceptual difficulties for theists who maintain that God is an all-good loving creator who chose to employ the processes associated with evolution to bring about life on this planet. Some theists vexed by this and other problems posed by the interface between religion and science have turned to process theology which provides a picture of a God who is dependent upon creation and unable to unilaterally intervene in the (...) affairs of the world and avert suffering. In the present paper I seek to critique process theism, focusing on divine action and the aforementioned problem posed by evolutionary suffering. I show that the promise of a more compelling account of a loving God who suffers with creation advanced by the process theist is illusory. Rather, the process God is less dynamic than promised. And on such an account the freedom of both God and the world are significantly more circumscribed than one may find in other forms of theism. (shrink)

Emotion theories in present philosophical discussion propose different models of relationship between feeling and appraisal. The multicomponent model considers appraisal as separate component and distinguishes it from feeling and physiological body changes thus presupposing what may be called 'disembodied' and 'disembedded' appraisal as representational. The recently emerged concept of enactment, in contrast, argues that appraisal is closely linked to feeling and physiological body changes presupposing what can be called 'embodied' and 'embedded' appraisal as relational. The (...) aim of the paper is to investigate which concept of appraisal, the 'disembedded' or the 'embedded' one, is better compatible with current neuroimaging data on emotion processing and thus neurophilosophically more tenable. The 'disembodied' and 'disembedded' concept implies distinct and independent brain regions underlying feeling and appraisal whereas 'embodied' and 'embedded' appraisal implies overlapping and dependent brain regions. Recent neuroimaging studies demonstrate that medial and lateral prefrontal cortical regions are involved in both feeling and appraisal and that there seems to be reciprocal modulation between these regions. Though preliminary, these data suggest that feeling and appraisal are associated with different patterns of neural activity across overlapping and interdependent brain regions. I therefore conclude that current neuroscientific evidence is rather in favor of the 'embodied' and 'embedded' concept of appraisal as relational than the one of 'disembodied' and 'disembedded' appraisal as representational that is presupposed in current multicomponent theories of emotions. (shrink)

This book describes and analyses the activities and procedures through which the professional economist may advise on matters of public policy, specifically on the performance of an economic system. The author shows that the decision-making component within a system may be defined in terms of optimal policies for attaining well-specified objectives, but that the choice of rules by which the system is governed must remain 'outside' the system due to its dependence upon the legislative process. He proposes a 'generating mechanism' (...) for arriving at public policy choices based on the interaction between the economic system and the legislative process. (shrink)

This chapter presents emotion as a function of brain-body interaction, as a vital part of a multi-tiered phylogenetic set of neural mechanisms, evoked by both instinctive processes and learned appraisal systems, and argues to establish the primacy of emotion in relation to cognition. Primarily based on Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis, but also incorporating elements of Lazarus' appraisal theory, this paper presents a neuropedagogical model of emotion, the somatic appraisal model of affect (SAMA). SAMA identifies quintessential components, (...) facets, and functions of affect necessary to provide a new domain, namely educational neuroscience, with a basis on which to build a dynamic model of affect serving to critique traditional cognitivist-oriented curricula and instruction, and to inform an alternative: neuropedagogy. (shrink)

Kalisch et al. discuss the causal process underlying stress in terms of a multidimensional goal-appraisal process, but there are several mechanisms at various levels of the brain that use different types of information to guide behavior. Depending on the mechanism, the characteristics of the process are different. Hence, both research and prevention must deal with appraisal in mechanism-specific ways.

Emotional experiences typically labelled “being moved” or “feeling touched” may belong to one universal emotion. This emotion, which has been labelled “kama muta”, is hypothesised to have a positive valence, be elicited by sudden intensifications of social closeness, and be accompanied by warmth, goosebumps and tears. Initial evidence on correlations among the kama muta components has been collected with self-reports after or during the emotion. Continuous measures during the emotion seem particularly informative, but previous work allows only restricted inferences on (...) intra-individual processes because time series were cross-correlated across samples. In the current studies, we instead use a within-subject design to replicate and extend prior work. We compute intra-individual cross-correlations between continuous self-reports on feeling moved and (1) positive and negative affect; (2) goosebumps and subjective warmth and (3) appraisals of closeness and morality. Results confirm the predictions of kama muta theory that feeling moved by intensified communal sharing cross-correlates with appraised closeness, positive affect, warmth and (less so) goosebumps, but not with negative affect. Contrary to predictions, appraised morality cross-correlated with feeling moved as much as appraised closeness did. We conclude that strong inferences on emotional processes are possible using continuous measures, replace earlier findings, and are largely in line with theorising. (shrink)