In summary, the goals of the present study were to test whether schematic appraisals occurs prior to or concurrent with those of a conceptual nature, and how appraisals at each of the two modes affect the emotional response systems, in particular when the two modes conflict. Appraisals of the conduciveness of the situation (“good” versus
“bad” for obtaining goals) as well as the appraised coping potential were examined.
The hypothesis that different appraisals lead to specific physiological changes, as indexed by measures of the autonomic nervous system, was tested. Changes due to appraisal performed at a schematic level and appraisal performed at a conceptual level were hypothesised to be, at least in part, separable due to the schematic appraisal being performed faster and hence preceding conceptual appraisal. Also, the influence of the two modes of appraisal processing on expressive behaviour were measured, and were expected to show little effect of schematic appraisals compared to conceptual appraisals.
2.3.2. Method
To accomplish these goals, ambiguous situations were created within a computer game, in such a way that appraisals performed at the schematic and conceptual processing levels would be in conflict. Compared to more classic emotion induction techniques such as the use of films (e.g. Gross & Levenson, 1995) or showing
emotionally laden images (e.g. Lang et al, 1993; Ito, Cacioppo, & Lang, 1998) where subjects passively endure the procedure, computer games have the advantage that the subject is actively engaged (e.g. MacDowell & Mandler, 1989), and parameters which are in theory relevant for emotion elicitation, such as appraisals, can be carefully manipulated in a relatively controlled setting (see Kappas and Pecchinenda, 1998, for
an example of how a player’s coping potential can be successfully manipulated through changing the task difficulty within a game setting).
To increase the relevance of the game to the participants, and thus render game events more emotional, cash prizes were offered to the players with the highest scores.
Within the computer game, schematic processing of appraisal was established by the repeated exposure to game situations with a given evaluative meaning. Conceptual appraisal was manipulated by giving explicit instructions of what to expect in different game situations. This instruction procedure is comparable to Lazarus and Alfert, who provided information just before an emotional event to change the appraisal of that event, and Neely, who manipulated controlled processing by provision of stimulus expectation. Importantly, a bias was introduced such that the response resulting from conceptual appraisal was the more adaptive, or "correct", response. By the introduction of this bias, the basic tenet that schematic appraisal precedes conceptual appraisal is put to its most conservative test. At a certain point during the game, after the original appraisal-event contingencies were presumably schematised, the player was instructed, upon encountering an event, to expect an evaluative meaning opposite to the contingency learned previously. Thus players found themselves in a situation in which previously learnt and schematised appraisals were in conflict with newly acquired conceptual appraisals. Appraisals of goal
conduciveness and coping, dimensions which were selected upon the basis of their decisive importance in emotion elicitation and differentiation (Scherer, 1997, see above), were instantiated in accordance with the definitions of Scherer’s (1984) component process model. Two studies were performed. In the first study only the goal conduciveness appraisal dimension was examined, whereas the second study comprised manipulations of both conduciveness and coping dimensions.
Conduciveness was manipulated by the presentation of a friend-character which gave the player points (conducive to the goal of winning) or an enemy-character which took away points from the player (obstructive). These game characters were differentiated by a different sound (study 1) or by a visually different appearance (study 2). The player’s task was to attract the friend and to repel or destroy the enemy as quickly as possible by pressing the appropriate mouse button. Coping was
manipulated by changing the capability of the player's ship to make use of either a big
gun with a high number of bullets (high coping) or only a small gun with few bullets (low coping) to defeat an enemy-character. The varying size of the player’s ship indicated which one of the two guns it was capable of using. For both manipulations, the player’s reaction times and correctness of the responses was recorded, the latter serving as manipulation checks of the player’s ultimate appraisal outcomes.
As well as the reaction times, physiological measures were monitored in real time during the manipulated events. These included measures of heart rate, skin
conductance, finger temperature and general muscle tension. Facial EMG measures were taken over the brow and cheek areas as indicators of facial expression.
Subjective feelings were measured with a rating screen which appeared after a subset of manipulated events.
2.3.3. Hypotheses
To address the aims of the studies listed above, we tested three hypotheses. First, we predicted that the appraisals of Goal Conduciveness and Coping Potential organise the response systems in a specific fashion. The review of the literature outlined above in section 2.2, combined with the theoretical predictions of Scherer (1986, 1987, in press), provided a basis for drafting specific hypotheses concerning the way in which different response systems would change in accordance with each appraisal. Facial EMG in particular has been found to reliably index valence and motivational congruency. Therefore, facial EMG activity was expected to show an effect of conduciveness, with more activity over the brow regions for obstructive events and more activity over the cheek regions for the conducive events. With respect to the relationship of the ANS to valence or conduciveness appraisals, the literature outlined above is not as unanimous. Some evidence provides a basis for expecting that the conduciveness manipulations would lead to specific effects on skin conductance activity and skin temperature. Skin conductance response magnitudes and rate were expected to be higher in response to the obstructive than conducive situations, based upon the suggestion that obstructive situations are more threatening and therefore more attention is paid to the potentially threatening stimulus (see also Kirby, 1999).
Less evidence is available for skin temperature and heart rate, but the evidence combined with Scherer’s (1987) predictions lead us to predict that the skin
temperature slope decreases (due to vasoconstriction) with obstructive appraisals and
increases with conducive situations. Changes at the level of the ANS related to coping have been more extensively researched. The appraisal of low coping potential is suggested to be related to resignation and higher parasympathetic activity and the appraisal of high coping potential to challenge and higher sympathetic activity. High sympathetic activity and low parasympathetic activity would result in increased skin conductance activity, increased heart rate, and decreasing skin temperature. Thus, we predicted that the skin conductance responses would be larger and more frequent for higher coping potential than for low coping potential appraisals, that the heart rate would be higher and skin temperature slopes more negative for high coping potential than for low coping potential. The relation between expressive behaviour and coping potential appraisals has rarely been studied, but those studies performed led us to predict that more expressive behaviour (as indexed by corrugator and zygomatic activity) would occur with high coping potential than with low coping potential.
Second, if the two modes of appraisal, schematic and conceptual, are performed concurrently and result in conflicting outcomes, we should at least be able to observe an increase in cognitive processing. This would be reflected in changes to those measures which are found to be indicators of information intake and cognitive effort, in particular reaction times, skin conductance activity and heart rate. We predicted longer reaction times and increased heart rate and skin conductance activity for the discrepant cases compared to the schematised cases before reversal and after relearning of the reversed contingencies.
The third hypothesis we tested was considered a direct test of the prediction that schematic appraisal would take place before conceptual appraisal in the case where the two modes were discrepant. Based upon the suggestion that appraisal, whether performed schematically or conceptually, affects the response systems, we predicted that some specific effects of schematic appraisal would be observable, even though the response would be overruled by conceptual appraisal. There is very little research integrating automatic appraisals with measures of ANS and SNS activity, hence concrete predictions of which measure would show effects of schematic appraisal are hard to formulate. An exception is the work by Öhman et al., and based upon their work involving skin conductance (e.g. Öhman et al., 1989), we expected that phasic skin conductance activity would show multiple responses, the first due to schematic
appraisal and the second due to conceptual appraisal. The amplitudes of responses were predicted to differently reflect the appraisal outcomes, with obstructive and low coping situations leading to a higher amplitude than conducive and high coping situations. We examined the other response measures for the possible influences of schematic appraisal, which we predicted would oppose or mute the effects of
conceptual appraisal of conduciveness or coping potential in the discrepant situations.
CHAPTER 3 FIRST EXPERIMENT