Cognitive appraisal

Last updated

Cognitive appraisal (also called simply 'appraisal') is the subjective interpretation made by an individual to stimuli in the environment. It is a component in a variety of theories relating to stress, mental health, coping, and emotion. It is most notably used in the transactional model of stress and coping, introduced in a 1984 publication by Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman. In this theory, cognitive appraisal is defined as the way in which an individual responds to and interprets stressors in life. A variety of mental disorders have been observed as having abnormal patterns of cognitive appraisal in those affected by the disorder. Other work has detailed how personality can influence the way in which individuals cognitively appraise a situation.

Contents

The reframing of stimuli and experiences, called cognitive reappraisal, has been found "one of the most effective strategies for emotion regulation." [1]

Cognitive appraisal also began to play an enormous role in the development of Economic Theory after the marginal revolution. During which, the classical objective “Labour theory of value [2] was displaced by the “Subjective theory of value,” [3] where cognitive appraisals on behalf of acting agents became the basis of all price signals and exchange ratios observed in the market. [4]

Conceptualizations and theories

Visual representation of Lazarus' transactional model of stress. Transactional Model of Stress and Coping - Richard Lazarus.svg
Visual representation of Lazarus' transactional model of stress.

Lazarus' transactional model of stress

This model uses cognitive appraisal as a way to explain responses to stressful events. [5]

According to this theory, two distinct forms of cognitive appraisal must occur in order for an individual to feel stress in response to an event; Lazarus called these stages "primary appraisal" and "secondary appraisal". [5] During primary appraisal, an event is interpreted as dangerous to the individual or threatening to their personal goals. During the secondary appraisal, the individual evaluates their ability or resources to be able to cope with a specific situation . [5]

Scherer's component process model

The component process model proposed by Klaus Scherer utilizes cognitive appraisal to explain an individual's psychological and physiological response to situations. Scherer's model makes additions to the Lazarus’ transactional model regarding how many appraisals occur. Rather than just two levels of appraisal in response to an event (primary and secondary), Scherer's model suggests four distinct appraisals occur: (a) the direct effects or relevance that an individual perceives an event being to them (b) the consequences an event has both immediately and long-term to an individual and their goals (c) the ability an individual perceives they can cope with the consequences of an event (d) the ways in which the events are perceived to result from an individual's values and self-concept. [6] This model and additional work by Scherer notably highlights not only psychological responses, but many physiological responses according to how events are appraised by an individual. [6]

Roseman's appraisal theory of emotions

Ira Roseman utilized the concept of cognitive appraisal to build an explanatory theory that encompasses a wider range of emotions (when compared with Lazarus' transactional model). According to Roseman (1996), positive emotions result from events that an individual appraises as consistent with their motives, while negative emotions result from events that individuals appraise as inconsistent with their motives. More specific emotions are based on if the event is perceived to be as caused by others, the individual, or due to an uncontrollable circumstance. [7]

Strategies

Cognitive reappraisal is one of the most studied mechanisms of the emotion regulation form referred to as cognitive change. [8] It encompasses a variety of different strategies, such as positive reappraisal (creating and focusing on a positive aspect of the stimulus), [9] decentering (reinterpreting an event by broadening one's perspective to see "the bigger picture"), [10] or fictional reappraisal (adopting or emphasizing the belief that event is not real, that it is for instance "just a movie" or "just my imagination"). [11]

Practical applications

The way in which stress is cognitively appraised has been found to influence mental health. [12] Cognitive styles of perceiving the world and interpreting events have been suggested as factors that may make certain individuals more prone to depression, such as Aaron Beck's cognitive theory (1967). A variety of studies have linked panic disorder with attentional biases and catastrophization. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emotion</span> Conscious subjective experience of humans

Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotions are often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, or creativity.

Stress management consists of a wide spectrum of techniques and psychotherapies aimed at controlling a person's level of stress, especially chronic stress, usually for the purpose of improving everyday functioning. Stress produces numerous physical and mental symptoms which vary according to each individual's situational factors. These can include a decline in physical health, such as headaches, chest pain, fatigue, and sleep problems, as well as depression. The process of stress management is named as one of the keys to a happy and successful life in modern society. Life often delivers numerous demands that can be difficult to handle, but stress management provides a number of ways to manage anxiety and maintain overall well-being.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arousal</span> State of being awoken

Arousal is the physiological and psychological state of being awoken or of sense organs stimulated to a point of perception. It involves activation of the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) in the brain, which mediates wakefulness, the autonomic nervous system, and the endocrine system, leading to increased heart rate and blood pressure and a condition of sensory alertness, desire, mobility, and reactivity.

Coping refers to conscious or unconscious strategies used to reduce unpleasant emotions. Coping strategies can be cognitions or behaviors and can be individual or social. To cope is to deal with and overcome struggles and difficulties in life. It is a way for people to maintain their mental and emotional well-being. Everybody has ways of handling difficult events that occur in life, and that is what it means to cope. Coping can be healthy and productive, or destructive and unhealthy. It is recommended that an individual cope in ways that will be beneficial and healthy. "Managing your stress well can help you feel better physically and psychologically and it can impact your ability to perform your best."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social support</span> Support systems for individuals

Social support is the perception and actuality that one is cared for, has assistance available from other people, and most popularly, that one is part of a supportive social network. These supportive resources can be emotional, informational, or companionship ; tangible or intangible. Social support can be measured as the perception that one has assistance available, the actual received assistance, or the degree to which a person is integrated in a social network. Support can come from many sources, such as family, friends, pets, neighbors, coworkers, organizations, etc.

An emotional expression is a behavior that communicates an emotional state or attitude. It can be verbal or nonverbal, and can occur with or without self-awareness. Emotional expressions include facial movements like smiling or scowling, simple behaviors like crying, laughing, or saying "thank you," and more complex behaviors like writing a letter or giving a gift. Individuals have some conscious control of their emotional expressions; however, they need not have conscious awareness of their emotional or affective state in order to express emotion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Lazarus</span> American psychologist (1922–2002)

Richard S. Lazarus was an American psychologist who began rising to prominence in the 1960s. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Lazarus as the 80th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. He was well renowned for his theory of cognitive-mediational theory within emotion.

Appraisal theory is the theory in psychology that emotions are extracted from our evaluations of events that cause specific reactions in different people. Essentially, our appraisal of a situation causes an emotional, or affective, response that is going to be based on that appraisal. An example of this is going on a first date. If the date is perceived as positive, one might feel happiness, joy, giddiness, excitement, and/or anticipation, because they have appraised this event as one that could have positive long-term effects, i.e. starting a new relationship, engagement, or even marriage. On the other hand, if the date is perceived negatively, then our emotions, as a result, might include dejection, sadness, emptiness, or fear. Reasoning and understanding of one's emotional reaction becomes important for future appraisals as well. The important aspect of the appraisal theory is that it accounts for individual variability in emotional reactions to the same event.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Determination</span> Positive emotional feeling

Determination is a positive emotional feeling that promotes persevering towards a difficult goal in spite of obstacles. Determination occurs prior to goal attainment and serves to motivate behavior that will help achieve one's goal.

The self-regulation of emotion or emotion regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions in a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed. It can also be defined as extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions. The self-regulation of emotion belongs to the broader set of emotion regulation processes, which includes both the regulation of one's own feelings and the regulation of other people's feelings.

Behavioral theories of depression explain the etiology of depression based on the behavioural sciences, and they form the basis for behavioral therapies for depression.

Positive affectivity (PA) is a human characteristic that describes how much people experience positive affects ; and as a consequence how they interact with others and with their surroundings.

Protection motivation theory (PMT) was originally created to help understand individual human responses to fear appeals. Protection motivation theory proposes that people protect themselves based on two factors: threat appraisal and coping appraisal. Threat appraisal assesses the severity of the situation and examines how serious the situation is, while coping appraisal is how one responds to the situation. Threat appraisal consists of the perceived severity of a threatening event and the perceived probability of the occurrence, or vulnerability. Coping appraisal consists of perceived response efficacy, or an individual's expectation that carrying out the recommended action will remove the threat, and perceived self efficacy, or the belief in one's ability to execute the recommended courses of action successfully.

Psychological hardiness, alternatively referred to as personality hardiness or cognitive hardiness in the literature, is a personality style first introduced by Suzanne C. Kobasa in 1979. Kobasa described a pattern of personality characteristics that distinguished managers and executives who remained healthy under life stress, as compared to those who developed health problems. In the following years, the concept of hardiness was further elaborated in a book and a series of research reports by Salvatore Maddi, Kobasa and their graduate students at the University of Chicago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psychological stress</span> Feeling of strain and pressure

In psychology, stress is a feeling of emotional strain and pressure. Stress is a type of psychological pain. Small amounts of stress may be beneficial, as it can improve athletic performance, motivation and reaction to the environment. Excessive amounts of stress, however, can increase the risk of strokes, heart attacks, ulcers, and mental illnesses such as depression and also aggravation of a pre-existing condition.

Emotion perception refers to the capacities and abilities of recognizing and identifying emotions in others, in addition to biological and physiological processes involved. Emotions are typically viewed as having three components: subjective experience, physical changes, and cognitive appraisal; emotion perception is the ability to make accurate decisions about another's subjective experience by interpreting their physical changes through sensory systems responsible for converting these observed changes into mental representations. The ability to perceive emotion is believed to be both innate and subject to environmental influence and is also a critical component in social interactions. How emotion is experienced and interpreted depends on how it is perceived. Likewise, how emotion is perceived is dependent on past experiences and interpretations. Emotion can be accurately perceived in humans. Emotions can be perceived visually, audibly, through smell and also through bodily sensations and this process is believed to be different from the perception of non-emotional material.

Emotional approach coping is a psychological construct that involves the use of emotional processing and emotional expression in response to a stressful situation. As opposed to emotional avoidance, in which emotions are experienced as a negative, undesired reaction to a stressful situation, emotional approach coping involves the conscious use of emotional expression and processing to better deal with a stressful situation. The construct was developed to explain an inconsistency in the stress and coping literature: emotion-focused coping was associated with largely maladaptive outcomes while emotional processing and expression was demonstrated to be beneficial.

Self-blame is a cognitive process in which an individual attributes the occurrence of a stressful event to oneself. The direction of blame often has implications for individuals’ emotions and behaviors during and following stressful situations. Self-blame is a common reaction to stressful events and has certain effects on how individuals adapt. Types of self-blame are hypothesized to contribute to depression, and self-blame is a component of self-directed emotions like guilt and self-disgust. Because of self-blame's commonality in response to stress and its role in emotion, self-blame should be examined using psychology's perspectives on stress and coping. This article will attempt to give an overview of the contemporary study on self-blame in psychology.

The shift-and-persist model has emerged in order to account for unintuitive, positive health outcomes in some individuals of low socioeconomic status. A large body of research has previously linked low socioeconomic status to poor physical and mental health outcomes, including early mortality. Low socioeconomic status is hypothesized to get "under the skin" by producing chronic activation of the sympathetic nervous system and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, which increases allostatic load, leading to the pathogenesis of chronic disease. However, some individuals of low socioeconomic status do not appear to experience the expected, negative health effects associated with growing up in poverty. To account for this, the shift-and-persist model proposes that, as children, some individuals of low socioeconomic status learn adaptive strategies for regulating their emotions ("shifting") and focusing on their goals ("persisting") in the face of chronic adversity. According to this model, the use of shift-and-persist strategies diminishes the typical negative effects of adversity on health by leading to more adaptive biological, cognitive, and behavioral responses to daily stressors.

Susan Kleppner Folkman is an American psychologist, author, and emerita professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). She is internationally recognized for her contributions to the field of psychological stress and coping. Her 1984 book Stress, Appraisal and Coping alongside Richard S. Lazarus, is the most widely cited academic book in its field, and the 17th most cited book in social science.

References

  1. Webb, Thomas; Miles, Eleanor; Sheeran, Paschal (2012). "Dealing with feeling: A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation". Psychological Bulletin. 138 (4): 775–808. doi:10.1037/a0027600. PMID   22582737. S2CID   207667973.
  2. Elson, Diane, editor. Value: The Representation of Labour in Capitalism. London: CSE Books, 1979. ISBN 978-0-85163-271-5.
  3. Menger, Carl. Principles of Economics. Translated by James Dingwall and Bert F. Hoselitz. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007. Originally published in 1871. ISBN 978-1-933550-14-6.
  4. Black, R. D. Collison, Coats, A. W., and Goodwin, Craufurd D., editors. The Marginal Revolution in Economics: Interpretation and Evaluation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1973. ISBN 0-8223-0260-7.
  5. 1 2 3 S., Lazarus, Richard (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. Folkman, Susan. New York: Springer Pub. Co. ISBN   0826141900. OCLC   10754235.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. 1 2 Scherer, Klaus R. (November 2009). "The dynamic architecture of emotion: Evidence for the component process model". Cognition & Emotion. 23 (7): 1307–1351. doi:10.1080/02699930902928969. ISSN   0269-9931. S2CID   145750370.
  7. Roseman, Ira J. (May 1996). "Appraisal Determinants of Emotions: Constructing a More Accurate and Comprehensive Theory". Cognition & Emotion. 10 (3): 241–278. doi:10.1080/026999396380240. ISSN   0269-9931.
  8. Buhle, J. T.; Silvers, J. A.; Wager, T. D.; Lopez, R.; Onyemekwu, C.; Kober, H.; Weber, J.; Ochsner, K. N. (1 November 2014). "Cognitive Reappraisal of Emotion: A Meta-Analysis of Human Neuroimaging Studies". Cerebral Cortex. 24 (11): 2981–2990. doi:10.1093/cercor/bht154. PMC   4193464 . PMID   23765157.
  9. Moster, J. S.; Hartwig, R.; Moran, T. P.; Jendrusina, A. A.; Kross, E. (2014). "Neural markers of positive reappraisal and their associations with trait reappraisal and worry". Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 123 (1): 91–105. doi:10.1037/a0035817. PMID   24661162.
  10. Schartau, P. E.; Dalgleish, T.; Dunn, B. D. (2009). "Seeing the bigger picture: training in perspective broadening reduces self-reported affect and psychophysiological response to distressing films and autobiographical memories". Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 118 (1): 15–27. doi:10.1037/a0012906. PMID   19222310. S2CID   33850126.
  11. Makowski, D.; Sperduti, M.; Pelletier, J.; Blondé, P.; La Corte, V.; Arcangeli, M.; Zalla, T.; Lemaire, S.; Dokic, J.; Nicolas, S.; Piolino, P. (January 2019). "Phenomenal, bodily and brain correlates of fictional reappraisal as an implicit emotion regulation strategy". Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience. 19 (4): 877–897. doi: 10.3758/s13415-018-00681-0 . PMID   30610654. S2CID   58591122.
  12. Gomes, A. Rui; Faria, Susana; Lopes, Heitor (2016-07-09). "Stress and Psychological Health". Western Journal of Nursing Research. 38 (11): 1448–1468. doi:10.1177/0193945916654666. hdl: 1822/42886 . ISSN   0193-9459. PMID   27330045. S2CID   21304315.
  13. Psychopathology : history, diagnosis, and empirical foundations. Craighead, W. Edward., Miklowitz, David Jay, 1957-, Craighead, Linda W. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons. 2008. ISBN   9780471768616. OCLC   181903762.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)