Studying appraisal-driven emotion processes: taking stock and moving to the future

ABSTRACT

Appraisal theories of emotion, and particularly the Component Process Model, have claimed over the past three decades that the different components of the emotion process (action tendencies, physiological reactions, expressions, and feeling experiences) are essentially driven by the results of multi-level cognitive appraisals and that the feeling component constitutes a central integration and representation of these processes. Given the complexity of the proposed architecture of emotion generation, comprehensive experimental tests of these predictions are difficult to perform and thus evidence has been slow to appear. Complementing earlier work on self-reported appraisal, a massive amount of empirical results from studies with experimental designs based on appraisal manipulation, using electroencephalographic and electromyographic measures, now confirms many of the theoretical predictions with respect to the effect of different appraisal checks, their interactions, and their exact timing. A major issue for future research is the nature of the coherence or synchronisation of the appraisal-driven components in the unfolding emotion process. It is suggested that interdisciplinary multi-team research will be needed to face the theoretical and methodological challenges of experimentally investigating the dynamics of the emotion process.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion definition
• emotion components
• emotion process
• multilevel appraisal theory
• component synchronisation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by funds granted to K. R. Scherer by the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung under [grant number 100014-122491] and by the European Research Council (ERC) under [Advanced Grant PROPEREMO 230331].