(FNRS Project 1114-037504.93)
Recent theoretical convergence in the area of emotion psychology suggests a need for studies adopting a dynamic, process-oriented multi-component study of emotional response patterning as predicted by cognitive theories of emotion (appraisal as antecedent of emotion elicitation and differentiation). The Geneva Emotion Research Group has made a number of contributions to this area, in particular with respect to concrete predictions on emotional response patterning following antecedent event appraisal as well as to measuring subjective experience, vocal and facial expression, and psychophysiological reactions. Furthermore, the group has conducted a number of process-oriented multi-modal studies of stress and emotion. A series of experiments are proposed to empirically examine the theoretical predictions made in Scherer's component process model of emotion (1984, 1986) using emotion induction via an interactive computer game. Within the context of the game, events likely to produce particular appraisal results will be systematically manipulated. The responses to these manipulations in facial and vocal expression as well as psychophysiological responding will be recorded. The subjective experience component will be obtained via computer-prompted verbal report immediately after the emotion-eliciting manipulation. In addition to the experimental investigation of the theoretical predictions, the results are to provide the basis for future AI simulations of emotion processes.
After many years of neglect, the phenomenon of emotion is increasingly studied, not only in psychology, medicine, sociology, and anthropology, but also in the cognitive neurosciences. Researchers in these areas have come to realize that important progress in the understanding of cognition and behavior cannot be made without a more adequate modeling of the emotionality underlying much of human functioning.
In recent years, there has been an important convergence of theorizing in the psychology of emotion (see Bischof, 1989; Frijda, 1986; Lazarus, 1991; Leventhal & Tomarken, 1986; Oatley, 1992; Scherer, 1990):
1) Emotion is now almost universally seen as a dynamic process, occurring in the form of an episode clearly delimited in time. In consequence, future research has to be much more oriented toward a dynamic analysis of the underlying state changes rather than toward the classical notion of emotion as a steady state.
2) The large majority of scholars in the area of psychology of emotion now agree that the construct of emotion implies several modalities, such as motor expression, physiological arousal, and subjective feeling, which are all linked or synchronized during emotion episodes. In consequence, research has to be directed at the way in which these different modalities interact and are synchronized and desynchronized.
3) Increasingly, the idea that emotion episodes are elicited and differentiated by a limited number of appraisals (cognitive and subcognitive) on a set of central dimensions is being generally accepted as describing the large majority of emotion incidents. Empirical tests of a great number of appraisal dimensions have been conducted or are currently proposed. These research efforts are directed at the identification of the appraisal criteria that allow a complete prediction of emotion differentiation as well as at the process of appraisal with respect to the synchronization of the different modalities.
In the study proposed here, the standard methodological dilemma of appraisal research (the exclusive dependence on the verbal domain) is to be resolved by manipulating actual (nonverbal) events that have a direct impact on the subject's current goals and needs and that are therefore likely to create strong ego involvement. While the appraisal processes cannot be directly manipulated, event characteristics in the standard context of a computer game can be manipulated in such a way as to produce systematically different appraisal outcomes. If we were to succeed in this endeavor, this would constitute one of the first real experimental studies of emotion-antecedent appraisal processes and their effects on different emotional reactions.
Concretely, relatively powerful but short-lived emotional episodes are to be induced in the context of an interactive computer game allowing identification with an agent by motivated subjects prone to get strongly involved with the game. The situational structure of events in the game are systematically manipulated in such a way as to produce distinct patterns of outcomes on several of the major emotion-antecedent appraisal criteria or stimulus evaluation checks (SECs: certainty, goal conduciveness, and the control, power, and adjustment subchecks of the coping ability SEC). Based on published theory and adapting the GENESE expert system (Scherer, 1993) for this purpose, detailed predictions for patterns of responses in facial and vocal expression, psychophysiological responding, and subjective experience are made. All of these components are measured continuously or, in the case of subjective experience, in significant windows defined by the manipulations. The data are used to test the theoretical predictions.
Bischof, N. (1989). Emotionale Verwirrungen oder: von den Schwierigkeiten im Umgang mit der Biologie. Psychologische Rundschau, 40, 188-205.
Frijda, N. H. (1986). The emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lazarus, R.S., & Smith, C.A. (1988). Knowledge and appraisal in the cognition-emotion rela tionship. Cognition and Emotion, 2, 281-300.
Leventhal, H., & Tomarken, A. J. (1986). Emotion: Today's problems. In M. R. Rosenzweig & L. W. Porter (Eds.), Annual review of psychology (pp. 565-610). Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews.
Oatley, K. (1992). Best laid schemes: The psychology of emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scherer, K. R. (1984). On the nature and function of emotion: A component process approach. In K. R. Scherer & P. Ekman (Eds.), Approaches to emotion (pp. 293-318). Hillsdale , N.J.: Erlbaum.
Scherer, K. R. (1986). Vocal affect expression: A review and a model for future research. Psychological Bulletin, 99, 143-165.
Scherer, K. R. (1990). Theorien und aktuelle Probleme der Emotionspsychologie. In K. R. Scherer (Ed.). Enzyklopädie der Psychologie. Band C/IV/3. Psychologie der Emotion (pp. 2-22). Göttingen: Hogrefe.
Scherer, K. R. (1993). Studying the emotion-antecedent appraisal process: An expert system approach. Cognition and Emotion, 7.
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