Theoretical background

1.2.1 Definition of emotion

Before discussing appraisal theory in detail it is important to provide a general frame of reference on emotion. This requires foremost a clear definition of the term emotion. Unfortunately, defining emotion has been a source of ongoing debate in affective science. Disagreements have focused, among others, on the contents of emotion, the relations between the contents, and process aspects of these contents. At the same time, an agreement on many of these aspects has also emerged by a kind of majority consensus. In psychological literature, this consensus has converged upon the componential definition of emotion (Frijda, 2008; Frijda & Scherer, 2009; Moors, 2009; Scherer, 2005). This definition states simply that emotions consist of components—as introduced in the previous section. In this thesis I used the following version of the componential definition:

An emotion is an episode of concurrent changes in appraisal, motivation, physiology, expression, and feeling, as an adaptive response to a change in the environment.

This definition is also depicted schematically in Figure 1.2. The componential part of the definition is represented by the inclusion of five emotion components, that is, appraisal, motivation, physiology, expression, and feeling. Each of the five components is assumed to (a) represent a distinct subset of emotional responding, (b) originate from a corresponding mental or bodily subsystem (e.g., a motivation system, a physiology system), and (c) play a functional role during an emotion episode (Scherer, 2005). In the following sections I summarize these aspects for each of the components (see Fontaine, Scherer, & Soriano, 2013, for a book-length treatment of componential emotions).

The appraisal component is often referred to as the cognitive part of emotion. The function of this component is to appraise situations with respect to their personal significance (Arnold, 1960;

Frijda, 1986; Lazarus, 1991; Scherer, 1988) and, as such, to determine which situations merit an emotional response and which do not. It is assumed that a person continuously appraises her environment in this manner, and that this process occurs largely automatically (Frijda & Zeelenberg, 2001; Moors, 2009; Oatley & Jenkins, 1996; Roseman & Smith, 2001; Scherer, 2001). The content of

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the personal significance that is being evaluated is typically restricted to a limited number of dimensions or criteria, such as goal relevance, compatibility with goals and desires, compatibility with expectations, causal agency, potential to cope with or control the situation, and compatibility with norms and values (see Ellsworth & Scherer, 2003, for lists of common criteria). Such criteria can be considered as communalities that are latent to emotion-eliciting situations (e.g., goal blocking is a communality of anger-eliciting situations). Appraisal theories assume not only that the appraisal component elicits changes in the other emotion components but also that specific patterns of appraisals will differentiate patterns of emotional responding qualitatively (e.g., a guilt or a shame episode).

Because appraisal theories are a central focus of this thesis, I present a further discussion of their assumptions and predictions in Section 1.2.1.

The motivation component of emotion involves the preparation of behaviour through changes in action tendencies, such as the tendency to approach, to avoid, or to attack (Frijda, 1986, 2009; Haidt, 2003; Prinz, 2010; Roseman, 2001; Scherer, 2005; Smith & Lazarus, 1990). Action tendencies help the organism adapt to a relevant situation by prioritizing goals and solutions that are appropriate for dealing with that situation (Frijda, 1986, 2010; Frijda & Mesquita, 1998). The tendency is expected to facilitate the execution of concrete actions but need not necessarily be acted upon. As such, action tendencies serve as a kind of latent mediator between appraisal and overt emotional behavior. This latent state is expected to be terminated when the desired goal is achieved or is no longer relevant (Austin & Vancouver, 1996). Due to its adaptive function, the motivation component has been particularly prominent in evolutionary accounts of emotion (Ledoux, 2012; Plutchik, 1980; 2001;

2003).

The physiology component is also referred to as the somatic component of emotion and involves bodily reactions produced by the central and peripheral nervous systems, as well as hormonal changes produced by the endocrine system (e.g., changes in heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductance, or cortisol levels). Like motivation, the role of the physiology component is to support adaptive behaviour during an emotion episode (Stemmler, 2004; 2009). Physiological responding has featured in the earliest studies of emotion (e.g., Cannon, 1915; James, 1884) and has received extensive attention in contemporary empirical research (see Kreibig, 2010, for a an overview of theoretical debates and a qualitative review of research).

The expression component is also referred to as the motor component. The function of this component is to execute or communicate actions prepared by motivational tendencies and physiological activity (Mortillaro & Scherer, 2009). This can involve gross behavior (e.g., escaping, attacking), changes in facial expression (e.g., frowning), or changes in vocal expression (e.g., screaming). The scientific study of emotional expression—especially facial changes—dates back to Darwin (1965) and later emerged as a fundamental area of research in discrete emotion theories (Tomkins, 1962; Ekman, 1972, 1992; Izard, 1971, 1993).

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Figure 1.2. Schematic definition of emotion. An appraised event elicits changes in appraisal, motivation, physiology, and expression. These changes lead to an integrated feeling component that can be labeled or categorized with an emotion word.

Bidirectional arrows between components imply time-dependent feedback processes.

The feeling component represents the experiential part of emotion. It is the conscious awareness of the ongoing changes in the other emotion components, represented as a kind of integrated Gestalt (Moors, 2009). These qualities make the feeling component highly salient subjectively during an emotion episode. In contrast to the changes in the other emotion components, which are distributed across the entire body and mind, feeling provides the sensation that what goes on is cohesive and qualitatively distinct from not being in an emotional state. The function of the feeling component is to allow the person to monitor their internal state and act on it by conscious regulation. This affords a certain degree of control over the responses that are promoted or executed by the motivational, physiological, and expression components. The contents of feeling can include subjective experiences of intensity, duration, dynamics, and also quality. The latter is often verbalized by emotion terms (e.g.,

“anger”, “fear”, “joy”). As Figure 1.2 shows, however, the act of labeling is considered to be separate and optional from any feeling changes, and therefore should not be conflated (Scherer, 2004).¹ Nevertheless, feeling labels represent highly salient and unified descriptors of emotion. For this reason, many theoretical models of emotion have put a strong emphasis on explaining variation in feeling categories (e.g., Ortony et al., 1988; Roseman, 2001; Scherer, 2001). In empirical research, the majority of studies have used ratings of feeling labels as the principal measure of emotions. Some of these data have motivated psychological constructivist emotion theories (e.g., Barrett, 2006; Russell, 2003) to challenge the notion that emotion categories are natural kinds. Instead, these theories assume

1 Note that, in practice, emotion words are often used interchangeably to describe feeling states and emotional episodes as a whole. Although these two uses are expected to be overlapping (i.e., an anger feeling implies that the person experiences an anger episode, and vice-versa), the former is a more narrow use than the latter.

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a dimensional feeling space that underlies all emotion terms, spanning valence (feeling good versus bad) and arousal (feeling calm versus excited).

The definition of emotion that I presented in this section focused mainly on componentiality.

Two additional aspects cited in the definition require further comment. First, I added that component changes are considered as an adaptive response to a relevant event (e.g., Lazarus, 1991; Smith &

Kirby, 2001). This implies that the collective of changes have a clear and directed function and that emotions are not random or “irrational”, as has sometimes been claimed (see Dixon, 2003, and De Sousa, 1987, for a discussion on historic connotations of the word “emotion”). In the previous section I highlighted how the motivation and physiology components in particular promote behavior that is adaptive to an environmental change, when triggered by the appraised relevance of the situation.

Second, I added that emotions are episodes. The word “episode” makes clear that emotions are considered as transient and time-varying phenomena. Davidson (1998; 2015) coined the term

“affective chronometry” to refer to the study of emotion and its temporal parameters (e.g., onset, dynamics, offset, duration). These parameters are widely acknowledged but have not been elaborated upon in many emotion theories. In Figure 1.2, time dependence is assumed through the bi-directional arrows between emotion components. These arrows indicate feedback relations between components, which implies time-dependence.

1.2.2 Appraisal theories

Emotion theories are often categorized into families such as discrete theories, constructivist theories, and appraisal theories. The existence of these families reflects a history of scientific debate on fundamental aspects of emotion, such as its definition, but sometimes merely a difference in focus on one emotion component versus another (e.g., basic emotion theories have emphasized the expression component in research, whereas appraisal theories have emphasized the appraisal component).

Appraisal theories have primarily distinguished themselves from competing theory families by the comprehensiveness with which they model emotion processes, by addressing virtually all steps that lead from an event to an emotion episode. Two important phases in these steps are (I) appraisal derivation from an event to appraisal values and (II) component derivation from appraisal values to values in all other components of emotion (Marsella et al., 2010; Moors & Scherer, 2013). With respect to appraisal derivation, appraisal theorists have specified the content of appraisal (e.g., values on criteria of relevance, goal compatibility), the underlying mechanisms that lead to this content (e.g., dual or triple route), the format of the representations that the mechanisms operate on (e.g., perceptual, symbolic), and the degree of automaticity (e.g., consciousness, efficiency, speed, control; Moors, 2010). With respect to component derivation, appraisal theorists have specified the contents of component patterning, the underlying algorithms (e.g., linear versus nonlinear), the underlying organismic subsystems (e.g., the central nervous system, the endocrine system), temporal sequencing,

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and predictions for concrete sets of component patterning (e.g., fear component patterning, joy component patterning; Moors et al., 2013; Roseman & Smith, 2001).

A full discussion of the two phases and their aspects in appraisal theory would be outside the scope of this thesis (see Moors et al., 2013 for an overview). I focused on the operationalization of appraisal models for component derivation. In Figure 1.2, this phase is represented by all arrows within the dotted emotion episode box. Appraisal theories have been strong advocates of componentiality (Moors et al., 2013) and have assumed strong links between appraisal and changes in motivation (e.g., Ellsworth & Tong, 2006; Frijda, 1987; Frijda, Kuipers, & ter Schure, 1989; Lazarus, 1991; Roseman, 2011), physiology (Aue & Scherer, 2007; Scherer, 1993, 2001, 2009b), expression (e.g., Laird & Bresler, 1992; Kaiser & Wehrle, 2001; Scherer, 2009b; Scherer & Ellgring, 2007), and feeling (e.g., Lazarus, 2001; Ortony et al., 1988; Roseman, 2001; Scherer, 2001). Appraisal theorists argue for specificity and differentiation in component changes for major emotion categories, and sometimes even for individual appraisal changes (Scherer, 2001; 2009b).

Componentiality in appraisal theory is also reflected by hypotheses that involve more than two components of emotion simultaneously. The feeling integration hypothesis (H5) posits that the content of feelings represent an integration of changes of other components that have reached consciousness (Ellsworth, 1991; Frijda, 2007; Scherer, 2009a). The emotion coherence hypothesis (H4) posits that, in general, component changes mutually coordinate during an emotion episode to form coherent patterns (e.g., Bulteel et al., 2013; Ekman, 1972, 1992; Freeman, 2005; Gross, 2010; Lazarus, 1991; Levenson, 1994, 2003; Matsumoto, Nezlek, & Koopmann, 2007; Scherer, 1984; 2001; 2009a; Tomkins, 1962).

Scherer (1984, 2001, 2009a) refers to this type of coherence as synchronization. His appraisal theory, called the Component Process Model (CPM; 1984, 2001, 2009b) assumes that there is time-dependent cross-influencing between emotion components (i.e., feedforward and feedback), and that the degree of synchronization between appraisal, motivation, physiology, and expression generates an integrated feeling as an emergent product.

Finally, appraisal theories have proposed hypotheses about component changes and their relation to discrete categories of emotion (represented by verbal labels). Indeed, predictions of this kind are the most common type of hypothesis in appraisal theory. Lazarus (1991, 2001), Ortony et al.

(1988), Roseman (2001, 2011, 2013), and Scherer (2001, 2009b) have all put forward tables or diagrams that link specific appraisal configurations to discrete emotion categories (e.g., “anger”, “joy”,

“guilt”). An example from the CPM model is given in Table 1.2. For some of the appraisal theories just cited, variation in labeled emotion categories is the primary to-be-explained phenomenon (Lazarus, 1991; 2001; Ortony et al., 1988; Roseman, 2001; 2011; 2013). Other theories seek to explain variation in all components, without necessarily linking the patterns to feeling labels (e.g., Scherer, 2001, 2009a). For these theories, the space of component patterning is considered potentially infinite.

These two classes of theories have been identified by Moors as two flavours of appraisal theories (Moors, 2014).

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Table 1.2. Predicted appraisal profiles for selected emotion categories, proposed by Scherer (2001). Table adapted from (Scherer & Meuleman, 2011).

Appraisal criterion Joy Rage Fear Sadness Relevance

Novelty

Suddenness High High High Low

Familiarity Open Low Low Low

Predictability Low Low Low Open

Intrinsic pleasantness Open Open Low Open

Goal/need relevance High High High High

Implication

Cause: agent Open Other Other Open Cause: motive Open Intentional Open Chance Outcome probability Very high Very high High Very high Discrepancy from expectation Open Dissonant Dissonant Open Conduciveness Conducive Obstructive Obstructive Obstructive

Urgency Low High Very high Low

Coping potential

Control Open High Open Very low

Power Open High Very low Very low Adjustment Medium High Low Medium Normative significance

Internal standards Open Open Open Open External standards Open Low Open Open

In summary, appraisal theories of emotion represent a family of highly detailed emotion theories in affective science. These theories posit that situations are automatically appraised according to criteria relating to personal concerns, and that these appraisals elicit and differentiate coherent responding in motivation, physiology, and expression. The conscious experience of all (or some of) these changes is integrated into a cohesive feeling, that can be labeled with an emotion word, such as

“anger”.