Emotion Sept. 10th

Primary Appraisal

  • Precursor to appraisal: sensation & perception; knowledge/belief of what the stimulus is
  • Appraisal = judgment about the meaning of a stimulus for the person’s goals/motivations
  • Purpose: predict emotional responses by understanding what the stimulus means to the actor

Primary appraisal

  • Does the stimulus matter for me? Is it good or bad for me?
    • Goal relevance: whether the event is relevant to my goals
    • Goal congruence (motive consistency): whether the event supports or hinders my goals
  • Leads to positive affect and negative affect

Secondary appraisal

  • Focuses on details about the situation and resources available to cope
  • More specific appraisals yield more specific emotional responses
  • Key dimensions (examples):
    • Agency/cause/responsibility
    • Certainty
    • Expectancy
    • Coping potential / control / power
    • Novelty / familiarity / attentional engagement / unexpectedness / change
    • Urgency
    • Intentionality
    • Norm compatibility / morality
    • Self-compatibility / feelings about self
    • Fairness
    • Anticipated effort / activation
  • Overall effect: these dimensions shape which emotion is felt (e.g., anger, guilt, sadness, fear, etc.)

Remember the fun appraisal game

  • After primary appraisal (negative affect) and secondary appraisal of:
    1) Other-blame
    2) Self-blame
    3) Danger/threat (uncertain coping potential)
    4) Irrevocable loss and helplessness about the loss (low coping potential and low future expectancy)
  • These combinations predict what emotion might arise; illustrates how appraisal patterns map onto emotions

Emotion and Appraisals: core ideas

  • If we know the person’s appraisal, we should be able to predict their emotion
    • Whether using all appraisal dimensions or core relational themes
  • Does it work? Cross-check with appraisal activities and scenarios
  • Three practical ways to influence emotional responses:
    1) Change the situation
    2) Change the person’s goals
    3) Change the interpretation of the situation for the person’s goals (their appraisal)

Appraisal categories and core relational themes

  • Core idea: Lazarus proposed core relational themes that link appraisals to emotions
    • Relational = how the environment relates to my motivation
  • Examples of core relations (how the situation is appraised to trigger specific emotions):
    • Immediate, concrete, overwhelming physical danger → fear
    • A demeaning offense against me and mine → anger
    • Wanting something someone else has → envy
  • This is a Gestalt view of appraisal: the whole pattern matters more than any single dimension
  • Craig Smith & Richard Lazarus (1993): aligned core relational themes with appraisal dimensions

Appraisal components and core relational themes for harm-related emotions

  • Anger
    • Relational theme: Other-blame
    • Appraisal components:
    1. Motivationally relevant
    2. Motivationally incongruent
    3. Other-accountability
  • Guilt
    • Relational theme: Self-blame
    • Appraisal components:
    1. Motivationally relevant
    2. Motivationally incongruent
    3. Self-accountability
  • Fear / Anxiety
    • Relational theme: Danger / Threat
    • Appraisal components:
    1. Motivationally relevant
    2. Motivationally incongruent
    3. Low / uncertain coping potential (emotion-focused coping)
  • Sadness
    • Relational theme: Irrevocable loss
    • Appraisal components:
    1. Motivationally relevant
    2. Motivationally incongruent
    3. Low coping potential (problem-focused)
    4. Low future expectancy

Emotion and Appraisals: the predictive claim

  • If we know someone’s appraisal, we should know what emotion they will feel
  • This holds whether we consider all appraisal dimensions or core relational themes
  • Usefulness validated by appraisal activities and cross-cultural studies (e.g., Scherer 1997) that map appraisal patterns to emotions

Examples of appraisal in everyday scenarios (scenarios A–E)

  • A. His friends have come to visit.
    • 1. Goal conduciveness: how important is the event for your goals/needs at the time? (a) It helped (b) It didn’t matter (c) It hurt)
    • 2. Agency: who was responsible for the event? (a) Myself (b) Close person (c) Other person (d) Impersonal external agency)
    • 3. Coping potential / control: how able were you to cope or act? (a) Powerless (b) Escape possible (c) Pretend nothing happened (d) No action necessary (e) Could positively influence event and change consequences)
    • 4. What emotion would you expect the person to feel?
  • B. Her child has died.
    • 1. Goal conduciveness: importance to goals/needs, did it help or hinder plans? (It helped / It didn’t matter / It hurt)
    • 2. Agency: who caused the event? (Myself / Close person / Other person / Impersonal external agency)
    • 3. Coping potential / control: how you could cope at first confrontation? (Powerless / Escape possible / Pretend nothing happened / No action necessary / Could positively influence event and change consequences)
    • 4. What emotion would you expect?
  • C. He is about to fight someone who insulted him.
    • 1. Goal conduciveness: importance to goals/needs, did it help or hinder plans?
    • 2. Agency: who caused the event? (Myself / Close person / Other person / Impersonal external agency)
    • 3. Coping potential / control: how you could cope? (Powerless / Escape possible / Pretend nothing happened / No action necessary / Could positively influence event and change consequences)
    • 4. What emotion would you expect?
  • D. She is looking at something that smells bad.
    • 1. Goal conduciveness: importance to goals/needs, did it help or hinder plans?
    • 2. Agency: who caused the event? (Myself / Close person / Other person / Impersonal external agency)
    • 3. Coping potential / control: how you could cope? (Powerless / Escape possible / Pretend nothing happened / No action necessary / Could positively influence event and change consequences)
    • 4. What emotion would you expect?
  • E. He is sitting in his house alone; a wild pig stands at the door; the pig seems dangerous.
    • 1. Goal conduciveness: importance to goals/needs; did it help or hinder plans?
    • 2. Agency: who caused the event? (Myself / Close person / Other person / Impersonal external agency)
    • 3. Coping potential / control: how you could cope at first confrontation? (Powerless / Escape possible / Pretend nothing happened / No action necessary / Could positively influence event and change consequences)
    • 4. What emotion would you expect?

Some things to notice about emotion, nature, and nurture

  • General pattern: when appraisals line up, the emotion is typically predictable; same situation can produce the same emotion across people when appraisals align
  • If you change an appraisal dimension, the emotion would change
  • Core relational themes help focus on the most important appraisals for that emotion
  • Measurement issues: the theory can explain stories, but translating to concrete measures can be challenging
  • Innateness questions:
    • Are emotional responses to stimuli innate? Not many innate responses to specific stimuli; meanings of stimuli are learned from environments, though humans may be biologically predisposed to learn some meanings quickly
    • Are emotional responses to appraisals innate? Cross-cultural patterns exist; different cultures may pattern appraisals similarly for certain emotions, but individuals may judge situations differently; however, those with similar appraisals tend to report similar emotions
    • Are expressions of emotion innate? Emotions are expressed through facial muscle contractions; expressions are learned rather than innate in terms of the words we use to describe them

Expressions of emotion

  • Facial expressions are combinations of muscle contractions
  • When self-reporting emotions, the terms we use are learned rather than innate
  • Duchenne perspective (1800s):
    • Duchenne de Boulogne studied the muscle contractions that create facial expressions using electrophysiology
    • Demonstrated that certain facial movements are linked to genuine emotional states
  • Innateness of facial expressions vs. learned labeling
    • How would we test innateness of facial expressions? Experimental design comparing cultures, cross-cultural recognition, and neurophysiological correlates

Practical implications and connections

  • Core idea: appraisal theory links perception, motivation, and emotion in a structured way, enabling prediction and intervention
  • Connections to gestalt thinking: the whole pattern matters; you don’t need to map every appraisal dimension to know the emotion
  • Foundational ties: sensation & perception; gestalt psychology; cross-cultural psychology (Scherer, Ekman studies)
  • Real-world relevance: predicting responses in counseling, negotiation, and education; designing interventions to alter emotions by changing appraisals, goals, or the situation

Quick reference: core terms

  • Primary appraisal: relevance and valence of the event for the individual’s goals
  • Secondary appraisal: perceived coping potential, agency, and other evaluative dimensions
  • Core relational themes: the fundamental relational patterns that tie appraisals to emotions (e.g., other-blame → anger, self-blame → guilt, danger/threat → fear, irrevocable loss → sadness)
  • Coping potential / control: perceived ability to influence or cope with the event
  • Appraisal dimensions: agency, certainty, expectancies, novelty, urgency, norm compatibility, fairness, etc.
  • Emotion mapping: anger, guilt, fear/anxiety, sadness as primary harm-related emotions tied to specific relational themes
  • Duchenne: foundational work on genuine facial expressions and their muscle basis

Summary takeaway

  • Emotions are predicted by the meaning an event has for a person’s goals and the perceived ability to cope with it, mediated by who caused the event, how controllable it is, and other evaluative judgments
  • Core relational themes provide a robust shorthand for predicting emotions without exhaustively listing every appraisal dimension
  • Cross-cultural patterns exist, but individual judgments vary; the appraisal framework still accounts for common emotional responses to similar situations
  • Expressions of emotion are learned in labeling and interpretation, while some facial expressions have strong physiological bases (Duchenne) explaining genuine displays of emotion