Appraisal Processes in Emotion

Usually, people\u27s emotions arise from their perceptions of their circumstances-immediate, imagined, or remembered. This idea has been implicit in many philosophical treatments of emotions (e.g., in Aristotle, Spinoza, and even Descartes and James; see Ellsworth 1994a; Gardiner, Clark-Metcalf, & Beebe-Centa, 1980; Scherer, 2000) and explicit in some (e.g., Hume and Hobbes), and it is the central emphasis of current appraisal theories of emotion. Thinking and feeling are inextricably interrelated most of the time: Certain ways of interpreting one\u27s environment are inherently emotional, few thoughts are entirely free of feelings, and emotions influence thinking. Reason and passion are not independent domains, or are rarely so. Of course there are exceptions: Brain stimulation, hormones, and drugs can produce emotions without external environmental circumstances, just as they can produce sensations, cognitions, and ideas without external environmental circumstances (Penfield, 1975). The fact that exceptions exist does not mean that there is no rule. The general rule suggested by appraisal theorists is that emotions consist of patterns of perception, or rather interpretation, and their correlates in the central and peripheral nervous systems (see Ellsworth, 1994c; Roseman & Smith, 2001; Scherer, 2001a, 2001b). A further assumption is that emotions are fundamentally adaptive, rather than maladaptive. In order to survive, an organism cannot simply understand its situation; it has to be motivated to do something about it. Many species have solved this problem with a mechanism that triggers fixed action patterns in response to appropriate stimuli. Emotions provide a more flexible alternative. They imply action tendencies (Frijda, 1986) without complete rigidity. _Lower organisms respond to stimulus patterns with behavior. Emotions, although they still motivate behavior, decouple . it from the perception of the stimulus so that reconsideration is possible (Scherer, 1984). Fear creates a tendency to flee, but a person may quickly realize that the threat is directed at someone else (reinterpretation of the event) or that an aggressive stance will intimidate the attacker (reinterpretation of response alternatives). Emotions allow flexibility both in event interpretation and in response choice. Emotions, from this point of view, represent an important evolutionary alternative. The phylogenetic expansion of the cerebral cortex enabled an increasing variety of interpretations, emotions, and behavioral options (see Hebb, 1949)

Understanding personality through preferences in popular mass media: An archetypal approach

In the Digital Age, it may be possible to assess personality in ways beyond those traditionally employed by psychologists. This work examines individual preferences in popular or mass culture media and what they say about people\u27s psychological processes. For example, knowing that someone likes romantic comedy movies and jazz music arguably paints a more useful picture of personality than saying that one is high in both extraversion and openness. In such cases, a media-based self-description provides a clear and tangible metric of individual interests. Here, we hypothesize that one reason such preferences may reflect personality is because media and the arts make frequent use of prototypical or archetypal themes and characters in the stories they relate to their audiences, and that people resonate---i.e., respond affectively---to these thematic elements in specific ways that reflect their personalities. Two studies were performed to test the general hypothesis that people\u27s tastes in popular and mass culture media largely inform their overall personalities and behaviors. In Study 1, two similar scales measuring resonance to archetypal media were compared and a five-factor model of archetypes in mass media was validated. In Study, 2, resonant media preferences were evaluated and compared with participants\u27 self-reported current concerns (including hobbies, group memberships, personal strivings, and possible selves) in order to identify possible archetypal life themes. Results supported the idea of archetypal life themes---that people\u27s mass media preferences are related to their everyday behaviors, goals, social interests, and self-concept. In the future, pop culture-based indicators of personality such as media preferences may be used more often as assessment tools; more pragmatically, they may serve to guide individuals\u27 overall personal development

Changing the Role of Appraisal and Interpersonal Factors in Guilt Induction: Time, Perspective, and Responsibility

Appraisal theories of emotion assert that guilt arises from the evaluations one ill makes about one\u27s behavior. Perpetrators experience guilt when they view themselves as responsible for harm caused to their victims. Interpersonal theories of emotion hold that guilt is a function of relational factors, including the need to repair relationships. Theorists argue that guilty feelings often arise in spite of appraisals, and that perpetrators feel guilty because of a need to communicate reconciliatory messages to their victims. These two views of guilt are generally seen as mutually exclusive. This study proposed integrating both views of guilt into a single, interactive theory of guilt that includes both appraisals and interpersonal concerns and that asserts that guilt varies as a function of the appraisals one makes about one\u27s own and others\u27 behavior, the nature of the relationship between perpetrators and victims, the perspective from which one views events, and the passage of time. The main question asked was: when taking into account these factors, is guilt better accounted for by an appraisal, interpersonal , or the newly proposed integrative view of guilt? One-hundred forty-seven male and 168 female university students were presented with scenarios depicting the interaction of two people who were friends or enemies and were directed to adopt the perspective of perpetrators, victims, or were not given instructions to adopt a perspective. In each scenario, a perpetrator acted to inflict harm that was either unintentional or angrily intended. Participants then rated perpetrators\u27 responsibility appraisals, emotional responses, and forgiveness needs. Additionally, participants were asked to rate how responsible perpetrators believed their victims believed them to be. Correlational analyses and AN OVA were used to test the effects of the factors in the proposed model on ratings of guilt. Although partial support was found for both the appraisal view and the interpersonal view of guilt, results provided the strongest support for the interactive view of guilt. Discussion focused on the role of appraisals, relational factors, perspective, and time in guilty feelings and the implications of these findings for further research

Narcissism, personality and personality pathology

This thesis used the methods of differential, cognitive and theoretical psychology to investigate the relationships between pathological narcissism and maladaptive personality and behaviour in general, and to attempt the beginnings of construct validation of M. Scott Peck's proposed `evil' subtype of the DSM -IV Narcissistic Personality Disorder in particular. After a review of theoretical and empirical contributions to the psychology of narcissism, two empirical studies were conducted. In the first, joint self- report survey research using 338 subjects investigated the psychometric structure of narcissism, normal and abnormal personality, and constructs theoretically related to narcissism. Item -level exploratory principal components analysis and confirmatory factor analysis resulted in new subscales for the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Scale -level exploratory principal components analysis of the combined questionnaires found evidence for a five - factor structure of abnormal personality. One of the five factors was related to narcissistic will to power and low agreeableness; another was related to narcissistic self - love and extraversion. Confirmatory factor analysis of a subset of the data found fair fit for the model.The second study investigated the relationships between narcissism, compartmentalisation, splitting, attribution style and response to disconfirming feedback. No evidence was found to support the hypothesis that narcissists have compartmentalised self -concepts. Moderate test -retest and alternate -form reliability data were obtained for the card -sort task used to assess compartmentalisation. No evidence was found that narcissists use splitting to translocate unwanted self -aspects onto others. Narcissistic dominance was associated with claiming personal credit for positive outcomes, while narcissistic vulnerability was associated with self -blame for negative events. Multiple regression with interaction terms indicated that the relationship between narcissism and response to disconfirming feedback is a function of other personality traits such as neuroticism, and may have opposite effects in different personalities and circumstances. Zero -order correlations suggested significant roles for splitting, narcissistic grandiosity and idealisation, and 12 NEO -PI -R facet -level variables in response to disconfirming feedback.Peck's proposed subtype of narcissistic personality disorder is theoretically distinguished from psychopathy by the use of self- deception to defend the conscience against guilt for the consequences of one's actions, rather than the absence of conscience that characterises psychopathy. Self- deception is among the most difficult and controversial topics in philosophical psychology. Theoretical chapters approached the issue with historical and literary examples, argued that splitting may be a fundamental basis of much self -deception, offered a model of malignant narcissism within the Schematic Propositional Associative Analogue Representation Systems (SPAARS) theory, and addressed the issue in the philosophy of science of whether the proposed personality disorder is a natural or social kind

Alienation and the Perception of Personality

Psycholog

Neural mechanisms underlying valence inferences to sound: The role of the right angular gyrus.

We frequently infer others' intentions based on non-verbal auditory cues. Although the brain underpinnings of social cognition have been extensively studied, no empirical work has yet examined the impact of musical structure manipulation on the neural processing of emotional valence during mental state inferences. We used a novel sound-based theory-of-mind paradigm in which participants categorized stimuli of different sensory dissonance level in terms of positive/negative valence. Whilst consistent with previous studies which propose facilitated encoding of consonances, our results demonstrated that distinct levels of consonance/dissonance elicited differential influences on the right angular gyrus, an area implicated in mental state attribution and attention reorienting processes. Functional and effective connectivity analyses further showed that consonances modulated a specific inhibitory interaction from associative memory to mental state attribution substrates. Following evidence suggesting that individuals with autism may process social affective cues differently, we assessed the relationship between participants' task performance and self-reported autistic traits in clinically typical adults. Higher scores on the social cognition scales of the AQ were associated with deficits in recognising positive valence in consonant sound cues. These findings are discussed with respect to Bayesian perspectives on autistic perception, which highlight a functional failure to optimize precision in relation to prior beliefs

Social identity and charismatic leadership attribution : why do they think he's fabulous when we know he's not?

If charisma is a personal force, or a set of specific behaviours, used by the leader to recruit and influence followers, why have all the great charismatic leaders been embraced by some and reviled by others? Weber (1947; 1961) conceived the charismatic leader as one perceived to possess transcendent powers which set him or her apart from others. New leadership theories (e.g., Bass, 1985; Conger & Kanungo, 1987; Shamir, House, & Arthur, 1993) have sought to catalogue these qualities and their effects on followers. However, neither of these schools of thought have clearly explained why polarised responses to charismatic leaders occur. An initial study explored the similarities and differences in the way two renown charismatic leaders--{lne adored, the other reviled-were perceived. Taking a follower perspective, this thesis used a social identity analysis (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Turner, 1987) to focus on the variation in the attribution of charismatic leader behaviours to the same target leader. Over four studies this variance was repeatedly shown to be associated with the level of a perceived shared social identity. Indeed, varying the content of the social identity varied the level of charismatic attribution; while reducing information about the leader's social identity reduced that association. Three other major effects of the social identification process on the charismatic attribution process were explored. First, follower outcomes commonly theorised to be the result of charismatic leadership behaviours, were shown to be strongly associated with social identity. Second, social liking for the leader was shown to fully or partially mediate the effects of social identity on the attribution of charismatic leadership and on follower outcomes. Third, attributions about supporters and detractors of the charismatic leader were investigated. It was found that those who shared a social identity with the leader viewed support for that leader as normal and positive, whereas they pathologised the responses of those who rejected the leader. Conversely, those who did not share a social identity with the leader viewed rejection of that leader as normal and positive, while pathologising follower support. It was concluded that, rather than being a mysterious personal process, charisma is firmly rooted in normal social identification processes because leadership and followership operate largely within a social context. Social identity affects the way we perceive the leader and evaluate his or her leadership behaviours. Rather than recognising the powerful influence of social identity on us or others, we tend to make the fundamental error of attributing our responses to "charismatic" leadership

Autonomy-Mastery-Purpose: Structuring Clinical Courses to Enhance these Critical Goals

Part I describes the difference in extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and reviews the negative effects of business and educational models assuming extrinsic motivation to be most effective rather than seeking to stimulate intrinsic motivation. Part II describes the Carnegie Foundation\u27s Preparation for the Professions project\u27s call for law schools to focus on law students\u27 sense of identity and purpose as part of their professional education, as well as noting the similar goal that students learn how to be as articulated by the Tuning Project of the Bologna process regarding higher education in Europe. Part III provides basics on the theory of human needs for a sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose on which the rest of the article is based. Part IV applies work contrasting autonomy-supportive teacher behaviors with controlling instructional behaviors to the clinical context. Part V of the article draws on cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and learning theory to suggest four methods useful for assisting novice law students on the steep road to mastery of lawyering competence within the time constraints of clinical programs and the professional demands of client service. Methods identified also contribute to satisfaction of students\u27 need for relatedness, which too often is undermined in other parts of law school. Part VI extends the discussion of clinics\u27 potential contribution to the need for relatedness and focuses on clinical education\u27s capacity to support development of students\u27 sense of how a career in law can contribute to their sense of life purpose in being part of something larger than themselves

Personal control, performance and health

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DX97174 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Preconscious perception and persuasion: the physiology of visual art and advertising

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses