7

Appraisal, Knowledge, and Experience

CONTENTS

Appraisal and Emotion

Historical Background and Concepts

Primary Appraisals, Good and Bad

Which is Stronger, the Good or the Bad?

Secondary Appraisals

Discrete Approaches

Dimensional Approaches

Extending Appraisal Research

Cultural Variation in Appraisal

A Third Phase of Appraisal: Verbal Sharing

Emotion Words

Concepts of Emotion as Prototypes

Categorical Properties of Emotion Knowledge

Emotional Experience

Measuring Emotional Experience

Specific Emotions and Core Affect

Summary

To Think About and Discuss

Further Reading

images

FIGURE 7.0 Diagram from Descartes's book, Traité de l'homme, showing how the soul—which can be moved by emotions—can open valves to let vital fluids from the reservoir (labeled F) into the tubes to work the muscles and produce actions. The Granger Collection, New York

Herein too may be felt the powerlessness of mere Logic … to resolve these problems which lie nearer to our hearts.

(George Boole, 1854, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, p. 416)

In 1961, a patient with epilepsy—a kind of electrical storm in the brain—had an operation to separate the left side of the cortex from the right, and hence to stop the spread of epileptic disturbances. (No other treatment had been effective.) This procedure is called a split brain operation, and in it the corpus callosum, a large bundle of nerve fibers that connects the ...

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