Appraisal theories of emotion

The problem appraisal theories solve

Three people receive the same message from a manager: “Can we talk tomorrow morning?” One feels anxious, one feels curious, and a third, who has been waiting for a promotion decision, feels hopeful. If emotions were direct reactions to stimuli, identical stimuli should produce identical emotions. They do not. And the same person can feel different emotions about the same event at different times, as its meaning changes.

Appraisal theories explain this variability by placing an evaluation between the event and the emotion. What produces the emotion is not the event itself but what the event means for the person: whether it matters, whether it helps or harms their goals, who or what caused it, and whether they can cope with it. The basic premise, shared across the family, is that emotions are adaptive responses reflecting appraisals of features of the environment that are significant for the person’s well-being (Moors, Ellsworth, Scherer, & Frijda, 2013). See appraisal in the glossary.

According to the same overview, the approach was pioneered in the 1960s by Magda Arnold and Richard Lazarus and developed from the 1980s by several theorists who proposed specific variants and tested predictions. The overview also notes that “appraisal” is used in widely different ways, which is why it is more accurate to speak of appraisal theories than of appraisal theory.

Lazarus: stress, coping and relational meaning

Richard Lazarus came to emotion through the study of stress. In the transactional model developed with Susan Folkman, stress is not a property of events or of people but of the relation between them (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Two kinds of evaluation are distinguished. Primary appraisal concerns whether something is at stake: is this relevant, and is it a harm, a threat or a challenge? Secondary appraisal concerns what can be done: what resources and options for coping are available? Coping itself is divided into problem-focused efforts, which act on the situation, and emotion-focused efforts, which act on the emotional response. That distinction anticipates the difference between situation modification and response modulation in the process model (Theory 02).

Lazarus later extended this into a cognitive-motivational-relational theory of emotion (Lazarus, 1991). The article sets out what a theory of emotion must address, including whether physiology should define emotion, whether categories or dimensions are the better strategy, and how biological universals are reconciled with sociocultural variation. It then applies an analysis of appraisal patterns, and of the core relational themes they produce, to anger, anxiety, sadness and pride. A core relational theme is a summary of the relational meaning that characterises an emotion: the kind of person–environment relationship that, if appraised, yields that emotion rather than another. The theory also gives coping a place inside the emotion process, not only after it.

The reasoning is functional. If emotions are responses to what matters, then emotions should be organised by kinds of significance, and different emotions should correspond to different ways in which things can matter. Anger, anxiety and sadness are then not arbitrary categories but responses to recognisably different predicaments.

Scherer: the component process model

Klaus Scherer’s component process model develops the appraisal idea into a more detailed architecture (Scherer, 2009). Emotion is conceptualised as an emergent, dynamic process based on the individual’s subjective appraisal of significant events. Two features distinguish it.

A sequence of appraisal checks. Rather than one global evaluation, the model proposes a series of checks that unfold rapidly and can recur. They are commonly grouped by the questions they answer: Is this event relevant to me? What are its implications for my goals? Can I cope with it or adjust to it? How does it fit social norms and my self-image? The outcome of each check is thought to modify the response as it unfolds.

Synchronised components. Appraisal outcomes are proposed to drive changes in several components: motivational (action tendencies such as approach or withdrawal), physiological, and expressive (face, voice, gesture). Emotion, on this view, is an episode in which these components become synchronised in response to appraisal. The subjective feeling is a further component that integrates and represents these changes, and categorising and labelling the feeling with emotion words comes later still (Scherer & Moors, 2019).

The model makes the relation between appraisal and emotion explicit and, in principle, testable. If the sequence exists, manipulating information relevant to an early check should affect responses earlier than information relevant to a later check. If components synchronise, their coupling should be greater during emotional episodes than outside them. The component process model is thus the most mechanistic version of appraisal theory.

What kind of evidence supports appraisal theories

Evidence for appraisal theories comes in several forms, which differ in what they can show.

Self-report of appraisals and emotions. People asked to recall or imagine emotional events and to rate them on appraisal dimensions show systematic patterns: emotions reported as anger are rated differently on dimensions such as agency and goal obstruction than emotions reported as sadness. These studies establish that appraisal profiles and emotion labels covary. They cannot establish that appraisals came first, because both are reported afterwards and people may reconstruct appraisals that fit the emotion they remember.

Manipulating appraisal-relevant information. Experiments that vary, for example, whether an outcome is caused by another person or by circumstance, or whether it can be controlled, and then measure emotional responses provide stronger causal evidence. The review by Scherer and Moors (2019) concentrates on experimental studies of this kind, including studies of how appraisal outcomes relate to physiology and expression. These findings support the claim that manipulated meaning changes emotional responses.

Timing and component coupling. Studies measuring expression and physiology at fine time scales test whether components change in the order the component process model predicts. Scherer’s 2009 article reviews such evidence in support of the model. Much of this work comes from the model’s proponents, and it is a narrative rather than systematic synthesis.

Overall, the evidence is consistent with the view that evaluations of meaning shape emotional responses. Whether it establishes the specific architecture of any one appraisal theory is less clear, and the site grades those claims as theory.

Appraisal as the target of reappraisal

Appraisal theories provide the mechanism that the most studied regulation strategy is meant to act on. Reappraisal means changing the appraisal: reinterpreting an event, or one’s goals in relation to it, so that the emotion that follows is different. In the process model it is the core of cognitive change (Gross, 2015).

The logic is direct. If anger follows from appraising an event as a blameworthy offence, then reappraising it (the person did not intend it, the loss is smaller than it seemed, the goal it blocked was not that important) should reduce anger. The emotion changes because what produces it has changed.

The evidence that instructed cognitive change alters emotional outcomes is strong at the level of effect: a meta-analysis of experiments found a small-to-medium effect (Webb, Miles, & Sheeran, 2012). Whether the effect runs specifically through changed appraisals, rather than, for example, through distraction by the effort of generating reinterpretations, is less directly tested, because most studies do not measure the appraisals themselves before and after. The site therefore records the mechanism as a theoretical claim with moderate confidence, while the effect itself rests on meta-analytic evidence.

Recent work also distinguishes kinds of reappraisal that map onto appraisal dimensions differently. Some tactics reconstrue the situation (what happened), others repurpose the goals against which it is appraised (what matters), and some act on the appraisal of the emotion itself (whether feeling this way is a problem) rather than of the situation (Uusberg et al., 2023). This refinement follows naturally from appraisal theory: if emotions depend on several evaluations, there are several places where meaning can change.

Appraisal, relief and resolution

Appraisal theory gives a precise way to state the distinction at the centre of this site. Stated as interpretation:

• If the appraisal that generates an emotion is unchanged, the emotion can be expected to return whenever the event is encountered or recalled. Expression, distraction or physiological calming may bring relief, but the generating evaluation remains in place.
• If the appraisal changes, because the situation changes, because new information arrives, or because the person reinterprets it, the emotion that the event produces changes too. That is one sense of resolution.

This also explains why rehearsing a grievance while venting can maintain anger (Theory 01). Repeatedly describing an event as an intentional, unjust offence re-enacts the appraisal that produces anger. It does not only express the emotion; it renews its cause.

Appraisal theory also warns against a naive reading of resolution. Reappraisal changes meaning, not circumstances. When a situation is harmful and could be changed, an appraisal that makes it seem acceptable may reduce distress while leaving the harm in place. Lazarus’s distinction between problem-focused and emotion-focused coping makes the point: both can be adaptive, and which is appropriate depends on what can be controlled. Whether a changed appraisal is accurate is a separate question from whether it reduces distress.

Where appraisal theory is contested

Does appraisal cause emotion? The strongest challenge is causal. Critics argue that appraisal dimensions may describe how people make sense of emotional episodes after the fact, rather than cognitive steps that produce them. In Russell’s framework, much of what happens in an emotional episode can be explained as core affect, a basic pleasant–unpleasant and activated–deactivated state, attributed to a cause, with appraisal-like processes as one ingredient among several rather than the trigger (Russell, 2003). The theory of constructed emotion goes further, proposing that emotions are constructed from predictions and concepts (Theory 04; Barrett, 2016). Appraisal theorists reply that appraisals need not be conscious, deliberate or verbal, and that experiments manipulating meaning show causal effects. The site records the question as open.

Circularity. If appraisal patterns are defined by the emotions they are supposed to explain, the theory risks being true by definition. This is sharpest in self-report studies, where participants may generate appraisals from their knowledge of emotion words. Experimental manipulation of appraisal-relevant information addresses the problem partially.

Speed and automaticity. Emotions can arise very quickly, sometimes before a person can say what they are reacting to. Appraisal theorists respond that appraisal checks can run at several levels, including fast, automatic ones. Critics argue that extending appraisal to automatic processing makes the concept harder to distinguish from perception or learning.

Differences among appraisal theories. Theories disagree on the number of appraisal dimensions, their order and whether they operate in fixed sequence. The editorial overview of the field acknowledges unresolved issues and critical objections (Moors et al., 2013). Evidence for the general premise is not evidence for any one variant.

What this essay concludes

Appraisal theories make emotions intelligible: they explain why an emotion fits a situation as a person understands it, and why the same situation can produce different emotions. Their central claim, that evaluations of meaning shape emotion, is well supported as a general proposition by experimental manipulations of meaning; their more detailed architectures, including the sequence of checks in the component process model, are supported mainly by their proponents and remain debated. For the question of catharsis, appraisal is the natural place to look for the difference between relief and resolution: expression that leaves the appraisal intact can calm without changing anything, and a changed appraisal can change the emotion itself.