The appraisal basis of anger occurrence and intensity revisited

Abstract

In a diary study we examined the relation between anger appraisals on the one hand, and the occurrence and intensity of anger experiences in frustrating situations on the other hand. The appraisals of frustration, other presence, other-accountability, and hostile intention are shown to be jointly sufficient for the occurrence of anger experience. Absence of one or more of these appraisals further results in a smaller proportion of anger occurrences, in lower anger intensities, and in both within- and between-person differences in anger occurrence. These results are interpreted in terms of anger experience as a categorical phenomenon for which the jointly sufficient set of appraisals acts as a cognitive point of reference. Willingness to go for anger categorisations in appraisal patterns that deviate from this cognitive point of reference is, at least in part, subject to dispositional individual differences.

Keywords:

• Anger
• Appraisal basis
• Sufficiency

Acknowledgements

The research reported in this paper was supported by grant GOA/05/04 of the Research Council of KU Leuven.

We gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of Phoebe Ellsworth and Batja Mesquita on a previous version of this paper.

Notes

Parkinson (1997) has drawn a distinction between conceptual and empirical relations, with conceptual relations being situated on a representational level. In the present paper, we focus on empirical relations (which, unlike the attribute information in itself, should not necessarily be subject to conscious access). Note further that in the remainder of this paper we also only look at the relations in question from a static point of view, rather from the dynamic point of view of the process of emotion inference across time (Siemer & Reisenzein, 2007).

In the present paper we limit ourselves to intensional or attribute information in terms of appraisals. To be sure, several authors have argued that other types of attributes should be included when dealing with the intension of emotional experiences, in particular action tendencies or action readiness (e.g., Frijda, Kuipers, & ter Schure, 1989), and, more recently, relational information that is assumed to be broader than appraisal information (Parkinson, 2007). Note, however, that our argument could be extended to these other types of attributes as well.

One may note that, on top of logical equivalence, one could also make causal claims (Lazarus, 1991; Parkinson, 1997). In the present paper, however, we limit ourselves to purely descriptive logical relations.

When coding both (emotion) category membership and feature (appraisal) presence in a zero–one way, necessity comes down to absence of the pattern (membership = 1 and feature = 0); this implies a positive feature–membership correlation; this correlation, however, can be very low, depending on the frequency of the (membership = 0 and feature = 1) pattern.

As illustrated by the second situation frame description, for frames with other-accountability present, other-involvement was not mentioned explicitly as it can be safely considered to be logically implied by other-accountability.