Putting appraisal in context: Toward a relational model of appraisal and emotion

Abstract

According to appraisal theory, emotions result from an individual's meaning analysis of the implications of his/her circumstances for personal well-being, and individual differences in emotion arise when individuals appraise similar situations differently. Relational models of appraisal attempt to describe the situational and dispositional antecedents of appraisals, and should allow one to predict such individual differences. In this article, we review three examples of our efforts toward developing relational appraisal models. In two, we start with a particular appraisal component, motivational relevance and problem-focused coping potential (Smith & Lazarus, 1990), respectively, and describe and test the relational model proposed for that component. In the third, as a precursor to developing a true relational model, we examine another appraisal component, emotion-focused coping potential, from a more dispositional perspective. We conclude by considering both the potential value of relational appraisal models, and future directions in the development of these models.

Keywords:

• Appraisal theory
• Relational models
• Copinga potential
• Motivational relevance

Notes

¹It should be noted that the usage of the term “relational” here and with respect to the relational models of appraisal that we advance in this article follows that of Lazarus (e.g., 1991b; Smith & Lazarus, 1990). Lazarus (1991b, p. 819) maintained that “emotions are always about person–environment relationships”, and that they involve not just the circumstances confronting the individual but also how those circumstances relate to the individual's personal characteristics, including his or her needs, goals, and abilities. This use of “relational” does not imply that interpersonal relationships are necessarily involved in the emotion-eliciting conditions, although they certainly can be (see Smith, David, & Kirby, 2006).

²These questions may be asked consciously, or outside of focal awareness (see Smith & Kirby, 2000).

³As we have noted elsewhere, there is also a third class of models, known as process models of appraisal, that are very important to the development of appraisal theory. These models attempt to describe the cognitive processes underlying appraisal, and typically describe appraisal as being able to occur at both a more conscious, volitional level, and at a more automatic level that typically occurs outside of awareness (e.g., Lazarus, 1991a; Leventhal & Scherer, 1987; Scherer, 2001; Smith & Kirby, 2000; Van Reekum & Scherer, 1997). These models are very imp ortant for reconciling the central premise of appraisal theory—that emotions are evoked in response to a meaning analysis—with observations that emotions are often elicited unbidden, suddenly, and outside the seeming awareness or control of the person who experiences them. Consideration of these models is beyond the scope of this article. For a more thorough treatment of them, the reader is referred to Smith and Kirby (2000).

⁴There are a couple of things we should note about these efforts. First, to keep things tractable, we have initially focused on explaining between-person variability in appraisal and emotion, and have not yet attempted to explain within-person variation in appraisal and emotion over time. Thus, in the work we report we focus on relatively stable dispositions as potential person-based antecedents of appraisal. In addition, we would not make much of the particular appraisal components we have chosen to focus on in this work thus far. These are simply the appraisal components for which we have made progress in developing and testing relational models. In the long term, we intend to develop and test relational models for each of the components within our structural model, and we believe that such models can and should be developed for additional appraisals emphasised in alternative appraisal models proposed by others.

⁵The appraised desirability or undesirability of the circumstances is captured by an additional appraisal component of the Smith and Lazarus (1990) structural appraisal model, motivational congruence, that will not be considered in detail in this article.

⁶Due to the large Ns involved in these analyses, all correlations reported in this section of the article and in Figure 4 are statistically significant at well beyond the p < .01 level, and thus statistical significance will not be explicitly reported here.