Integration of Two Skeptical Emotion Theories: Dimensional Appraisal Theory and Russell's Psychological Construction Theory

ABSTRACT

This inquiry attempts to integrate two skeptical emotion theories: dimensional appraisal theory and Russell's (2003) psychological construction theory. To bring out the skeptical elements of these theories, I compare them first with two classic theories: affect program theory and discrete appraisal theory. The skeptical theories are similar to each other in that they replace the concept of emotion with the concept of emotional episode, and that they organize the variety within the set of emotional episodes according to dimensions instead of vernacular emotion subsets. Their differences concern the strength of the relations among the components in emotional episodes and the scientific status of the set of emotional episodes. To make an informed decision about the elements to keep and to revise from both theories, I engage in a separate analysis of the behavior-related components and the experience component, guided by insights from general behavior theories and general theories of consciousness. The analysis of the behavior-related components suggests the relatively uncharted idea that the so-called emotional aspect of behavior can be caused by a goal-directed mechanism. The analysis of the experience component reveals that different theories have emphasized different aspects of experience and hence different paths toward experience. The inquiry ends with an integrated theory that rejects the scientific status of emotions or emotional episodes, but accepts the scientific status of the components and sees strong causal relations among them.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion
• affect program
• appraisal
• constructivist
• goal-directed

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Jim Russell for many discussions that eventually led to the plan to integrate both theories and for valuable comments on an earlier draft.

Funding

Preparation of this article was supported by Research Programme G.0223.13N of the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) and the Research Fund of KU Leuven (GOA/15/003).

Notes

¹ The affect program theory, discrete appraisal theory, and dimensional appraisal theory (in singular form) discussed here refer to idealizations that are not necessarily and probably not fully instantiated in any of the existing theories. The authors whom I provide as examples are representative for some but not all of the assumptions inherent in these idealizations.

² Parrot (2007) noted that all mental activity has a brain substrate and hence that the central part of the somatic component should not be considered as a separate (part of a) component.

³ In some writings, Ekman (e.g., Matsumoto & Ekman, 2009) reduced the appraisal mechanism to a simple matching mechanism that does nothing but recognize perceptual features of unconditioned stimuli.

⁴ I define a goal as the representation of a valued outcome. Thus, goal is an umbrella term covering all kinds of conative concepts such as desires, wishes, needs, concerns, intentions, and action tendencies.

⁵ Appraisal theory has argued in return that most of the stimulus influence is captured in and hence mediated by appraisal. This is why appraisal theory assumes strong, albeit not perfect, causal ties (Moors, 2014a; Scherer, 2001b).

⁶ Note that the dimensions of PC theory can easily be mapped onto appraisal dimensions: arousal onto goal relevance and un/expectedness; valence onto goal in/congruence; and dominance onto control.

⁷ This type of dual process theory differs from the type just discussed in which types of mechanisms are distinguished on the basis of types of operations (rule based vs. associative). Moreover, I reject the common practice to map goal directed onto rule based and stimulus driven onto associative (see Moors, 2014b).

⁸ A third type of behavior, which I do not consider here, are reflexes (e.g., the knee-jerk reflex). A reflex refers to the activity of (groups of) muscles caused by nonrepresentational mechanisms (see LeDoux, Schiller, & Cain, 2009).

⁹ Several of these routes exemplify ways in which goal-directed and stimulus-driven mechanisms can interface.

¹⁰ A mechanism is more optimal if it can bring about a higher degree of overall goal satisfaction; it is more automatic if it can operate with fewer operating conditions such as time and attention (Moors, 2016).

¹¹ Three arguments for this position are that (a) the goal-directed mechanism can vary from simple to complex, and the more simple variants are likely to be more automatic; (b) the goals at stake in the goal-directed mechanism may compensate for the lack of other conditions (time, attention); and (c) the goal-directed mechanism (defined in terms of a specific representational content) may recruit associative operations instead of rule-based ones. Note that the third architecture rejects the assumption that the goal-directed mechanism is nonautomatic but accepts the assumption that it is more optimal.

¹² In my description of these theories, I use the term emotional behavior as shorthand for the emotional aspect of behavior. As I explain later, however, I do not endorse a distinction between emotional and nonemotional behavior myself.

¹³ I define affordance here within a mental framework, unlike Gibson (1977), who introduced the term affordance to refer to an objective stimulus feature.

¹⁴ If this example is not convincing, consider the action tendency to sink through the ground, supposedly characteristic of shame, but with zero utility.

¹⁵ All three theories foresee the possibility of emotion blending or emotion competition. Stimuli can trigger several emotional action tendencies in parallel that either blend (when they are compatible) or compete (when they are incompatible). Here competition occurs between two stimulus-driven mechanisms.

¹⁶ I follow Searle (1983) in capitalizing the word Intentional to avoid confusion with intentional in the sense of caused by a goal (see Moors & De Houwer, 2006).

¹⁷ The mechanism involved in the experience of the observable components is similar but not identical to that involved in second-order consciousness. In both cases, there is an additional information-processing step, but in the former case the result is first-order consciousness of the bodily responses and in the second case the result is consciousness of being conscious.

¹⁸ I follow Mackie's (1974) view of causation that a cause is a condition that is an Insufficient but Necessary part of a set of conditions that is itself Unnecessary but Sufficient (i.e., INUS condition). All conditions in the set are equally necessary and therefore equally causal.