Can cognitive methods be used to study the unique aspect of emotion: An appraisal theorist's answer

Abstract

I address the questions of whether cognitive methods are suited to the study of emotion, and whether they are suited to the study of the unique aspect of emotion. Based on a definition of cognitive processes as those that mediate between variable input–output relations by means of representations, and the observation that the relation between stimuli and emotions is often variable, I argue that cognition is often involved in emotion and that cognitive methods are suited to study them. I further propose that the unique feature of emotion has to do with the content of the representations involved in the transition from stimulus input to emotion. Emotions are elicited when stimuli contain information about the satisfaction status of goals (i.e., when they are goal relevant). Given that cognitive methods are fit to study any representation-mediated process regardless of their content, they can a fortiori be used to study a process that operates on representations with goal-relevant content. I compare this process to processes that have no or a different relation to goals, including the process that deals with purely valenced information.

Acknowledgements

Agnes Moors is a postdoctoral researcher at the Fund for Scientific Research (Flanders, Belgium).

The author is grateful to Jan De Houwer and Adriaan Spruyt for valuable discussions and comments on an earlier draft of the paper.

Notes

¹This functional account and the broad representation-mediated account discussed above are both concerned with change and variation. Whereas the former considers change within a single encounter with the stimulus (the output is different from the input), the latter considers change over the course of several actual or possible encounters with the stimulus (the input–output relation at time t ₁ is different from that at time t ₂, or it is different from one context to another).

²I capitalise Intentional in philosophical use, but not intentional in ordinary use, following Searle (1983).

³Note that this idea challenges the widespread view that integration of representations demands representations of a propositional format (e.g., Bermudéz, 1995) and cannot take place under conditions of automaticity. It may be so that different types of input–output variability (functional process level) demand different mechanisms (formal process level): some must only be capable of handling a single input and suffice with a simple associative process, whereas others must be capable of integrating a double (or multiple) input and require a complex associative process or a rule-based one (Moors, 2006). In any case, all three types of formal processes (simple associative, complex associative, and rule based) are representation mediated and count as cognitive on my use of the term.

⁴Potency and activity are non-valenced features but they are not unrelated to emotion.

⁵For one part, the satisfaction of a central goal is at the service of a central goal or another peripheral goal. For the other part, peripheral goals may lead a life of their own. For example, the goal to own a nice car may stem from the goal to be appreciated by others, but it may also become a purpose in itself (Frijda, 1986).

⁶Priming experiments may, of course, require participants to sort features into more than two categories.