Psychology
Lazarus Theory of Emotion
The Lazarus Theory of Emotion proposes that cognitive appraisal plays a crucial role in determining emotions. It suggests that emotions are the result of an individual's interpretation and evaluation of a situation, rather than being solely driven by physiological responses. According to this theory, the way a person appraises a situation influences the emotions they experience.
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7 Key excerpts on "Lazarus Theory of Emotion"
eBook - PDFStress
A Brief History
- Cary Cooper, Philip J. Dewe(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
Lazarus and Emotions Lazarus (2001) talks in terms of his work progressing through three phases: (a) the origins and terminology of the appraisal construct, (b) appraisal theory as applied to psychological stress, and (c) a change in focus from stress to emotions. Lazarus had always sensed the importance of emotions, and as early as 1966 had began paying attention to emotion theory. For some time stress and emotions had been treated as two ‘‘quite independent literatures’’ and ‘‘really should be dealt with as a single unified topic. Emotion is, in effect, a superordinate concept, and stress is a subordinate but very important part of the emotional life’’ (Lazarus, 2001, p.54). The link between appraisal and emotions was routed through the idea of core relational meanings , where every emotion was linked to a different pattern of appraisals (Lazarus, 2001). The difficulties and complexities when dealing with emotions are considerable and well discussed by Lazarus (1991; 1993; 1999; 2001). What is important from Lazarus’s point of view is that when thinking about appraisal and emotions, we 82 THE WORK OF RICHARD LAZARUS think of them in terms of an emotional whole. Most appraisal theories are good at distinguishing the components of meaning from emotions, but they are not so good at describing the path-way that brings them together, linked as they are, through core relational meanings (Lazarus, 1999). Taking this to a higher level of abstraction requires that each emotion is associated with a core relational theme. The debate surrounding appraising and ap-praisals, emotions and core relational themes have been touched on and discussed above. While there is much to consider in what Lazarus has given, through his core relational meanings as a causal pathway, this may well provide researchers with the organizing concept that is so desperately needed in stress re-search to herald in what may be new beginnings and new methods ready to take such ideas forward.
eBook - PDFThe Role of Emotions in Criminal Law Defences
Duress, Necessity and Lesser Evils
- Eimear Spain(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
72 Obviously, each of these individual appraisals are not necessary in each encounter but they imbue a situation with meaning and highlight the complex nature of cognitive appraisal in emotions. Under the cognitive appraisal theory, cognition cannot be separated from emotion. Lazarus takes the view that cognitive elements are both necessary and sufficient conditions of emotion. 73 This sentiment is echoed by Nussbaum who also believes that cognitive elements ‘are an essential part of the emotion’s identity, and of what differentiates one emotion from other emotions’. 74 She believes that judgments are both necessary and sufficient constituent elements, 75 although they will often be accompanied by bodily arousal. 76 It is important to note that this theory does not ignore the physiological changes that often accompany emotional experience. These changes, such as alterations in heart rate and temperature, follow or are consequential to the experience of emo- tion rather than constitute or cause the emotion. De Sousa states that ‘[e]ven when emotions involve physical manifestations, it is their mental causation that defines them as emotions and grounds our evaluations of them’. 77 Soloman clarifies that an emotion ‘is not just a physiological reaction-cum-sensation plus an interpretation, a cause, and certain forms of behaviour. It is essentially an interpretation, a view of its cause’. 78 69 Ibid., at p. 149. 70 Ibid., at p. 150. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid. 73 See R. S. Lazarus, ‘Cognition and Motivation in Emotion’ (1991) 46 Am. Psychologist 352. 74 Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, The Intelligence of Emotions, above note 65, at p. 34. 75 Ibid., at p. 44. 76 Ibid., at p. 64. 77 R. De Sousa, The Rationality of Emotions (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), at p. 6. 78 Solomon, Not Passion’s Slave, Emotions & Choice, above note 29, at p. 86. psychological literature 79
eBook - PDF- Robert Plutchik, Henry Kellerman, Robert Plutchik, Henry Kellerman(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
This perspective sug-gests that adult humans may well be the most emotional creatures on earth, since our ability to use complex, symbolic cognitive processes permits subtle distinctions to be made and later recalled among many types of information. COGNITIVE APPRAISAL The concept used to denote the evaluative processes that are central to the cognitive theory of emotions is cognitive appraisal (Folkman, et al., 1979; Lazarus, 1966; Lazarus et al., 1970; Lazarus & Launier, 1978). Whether it is couched in terms of information processing (Folkman et al., 1979), tacit knowing (Polanyi, 1958), personal constructs (Kelly, 1955), self-efficacy (Ban-dura, 1977), or whatever, such a concept is essential to understand and deal with the great individual differences in emotional intensity, quality, and fluc-tuation observed in comparable environmental settings. Were it not for such individual differences, found even within the same cultural settings, we would not need to speak of cognitive mediation. However, in the face of such varia-tion among and within persons, theories of emotion must take into account the way what is happening is construed by the person. In its fullest expression, a cognitively oriented theory states that each emo-tion quality and intensity—anxiety, guilt, jealousy, love, joy, or whatever—is generated and guided by its own particular pattern of appraisal (see Beck, 1971; Ellis, 1962; Lazarus & Launier, 1978). Learning, memory, perception, and thought—in short, cognitive activity—are always key causal aspects of the emotional response pattern. The renewed emphasis on cognition brings with it a shift in the central variables of psychological analysis. Instead of needs and transient drives, we must speak of motivational constructs such as commitments (e.g., Klinger, 1975, 1977), goals, and values. These variables affect the personal stakes with respect to which well-being is defined.
eBook - ePub- Phil Evans(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
For Lazarus and other thoroughgoing cognitive theorists, it is clear that what they choose to call emotion depends on the individual’s constructing that emotion out of an appraisal of the self in relation to the immediate environmental context. To quote Lazarus again: ‘cognition of meaning’ is a necessary pre-condition of emotion. Perhaps it is, but ‘cognition of meaning’ is not the easiest of concepts to pin down when it comes to testing Lazarus’ proposition, if indeed it is meant to be testable. But rather than cover old ground, let us examine the essence of Lazarus’ case, but less dogmatically with regard to what is and what is not an emotion. With respect to emotional words, we are required to learn what linguistic philosophers might call a ‘context of utterance’ for such words. The social context then in a sense defines the emotion more than any associated bodily activities or inner feelings. Thus, attributing pride, shame, joy, ‘the blues’, to myself or others is merely part of what Wittgenstein showed to be a necessarily public ‘language-game’. The essence of a particular emotion is not private feeling but public rule-following. Now this is not to be confused with a denial that inner feelings matter at all. We may imagine that a person with certain neurological damage may indicate that the intensity of his emotional feelings has diminished as a result of injury. What we cannot do, however, is to chase a defining feature through an inner feeling associated with a particular emotion X as opposed to a particular emotion Y. It would be as meaningless an exercise as ruminating over whether your sensation of ‘red’ differs from mine: the meaning of the word ‘red’ depends on public rules of reference, not on inner sensations. There is no mileage in ‘private languages’ to refer to sensations
eBook - ePubCompanion Encyclopedia of Psychology
Volume One
- Andrew M. Colman(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
I have considered some of the factors that are symptomatic of emotion. I shall now look at these same variables again, but this time discussing their possible participation in the causation of emotional experience. My approach will be to consider the roles these factors have been assigned by different theorists in explaining how emotional experience is produced. Finally, I shall attempt to integrate the insights of these alternative models into a more general model of the emotional syndrome as a whole.Factor 1: appraisal
The first and most central factor in the causation of emotion relates to the evaluation of some situation or event, based on the process of appraisal. Appraisal theorists suggest that emotions are rarely direct reactions to stimulus qualities. Rather, what gives an object emotional impact is its relevance to the individual's personal concerns. Lazarus (1984), for example, argued that before it can cause an emotion, a stimulus, event, or encounter must be interpreted and evaluated to weigh up its personal significance.An experiment by Lazarus's research team (Speisman, Lazarus, Mordkoff, & Davison, 1964) provides an illustration of how emotional response might depend upon appraisal. The unfortunate subjects in this study were shown a movie depicting a tribal ritual called "subincision" in which adolescent males undergo an apparently painful operation on their genitals. The film was found to be emotionally unpleasant to watch, producing autonomic and self-report reactions of stress. However, these reactions could be reduced by including a soundtrack suggesting an "anthropological perspective" which encouraged subjects to interpret the depicted events in terms of the insights they provided into an alien culture. Correspondingly, a soundtrack emphasizing the trauma of the ritual increased stress reactions. The authors argued that the different soundtracks modified subjects' ongoing appraisal of the emotional content of the movie, allowing them to interpret the material as more or less threatening, and thus intensify or alleviate their emotional reaction.
eBook - ePub- Joseph P. Forgas(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
Lazarus, 1968 , 1991). Thus, initial associatively elicited appraisals that might not fully fit the current circumstances can be modified to provide a more appropriate evaluation and emotional response. New connections can be forged between one's present circumstances and potentially related previous experiences. It is even possible that appraisal meanings associated with previous experiences in memory can be reevaluated and changed. In addition, the “cognitive work” represented by reasoning—the results of the interpretation and reinterpretation of the emotion-eliciting situation—can be stored in memory as part of the emotion-eliciting event, and thus become available for subsequent associative processing. This last fact is vital, in that it provides a mechanism by which the emotion system can “learn,” and through associative processing, can quickly and automatically produce the highly differentiated, information-rich signals that the motivational functions served by emotion seem to require.The development of this model is still in its infancy. At a theoretical level, we are in the process of exploring the extent to which the model can account for phenomena, such as repression and the misattribution of arousal, that have traditionally caused problems for appraisal theory when appraisal has been conceptualized as a single, deliberative process (Smith & Kirby, 2000 ). In addition, we are in the process of generating testable, novel predictions from the model, particularly concerning how the two modes of appraisal, with their rather different properties, interact with one another. At an empirical level, work has just recently begun to demonstrate that the two modes of processing are both relevant to appraisal and emotion (e.g., van Reekum & Scherer, 1998).Appraisal Theory, Affect, and Social Cognition
In his book The Science of Emotion, Cornelius (1996)
eBook - ePubPassionate Deification
The Integral Role of the Emotions in Christ's Life and in Christian Life
- Henry L. Novello(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Pickwick Publications(Publisher)
Emotions make sense when they are considered from the standpoint of our important goals in life (desires) and the beliefs we hold about ourselves, other people, and the world in which we live. When a personal goal is at stake we experience the arousal of an appropriate emotion, and the more important the goal from a personal and interested perspective, the stronger the emotion will be. Integral to the experience of emotions is the action potential or motivational forces associated with them, so that when an emotion is aroused we are mobilized to gain something of benefit (e.g., love), or to prevent something harmful from occurring (e.g., fear), or to inflict harm on someone (e.g., hatred). It is apparent from the foregoing discussion of the various philosophical studies on emotion that there are many interrelated aspects of emotion that one should consider carefully in seeking to arrive at the truth regarding the significance of our emotional life. The picture is indeed a complex one. A key issue that a cognitive theory of emotion has to grapple with is what the term “cognition” actually refers to—a belief? a thought? a judgment? an appraisal? a perception? To my mind, since beliefs, interpretations, judgments, appraisals, and perceptions are all of a cognitive nature and related to one another, it would be preferable to talk of cognitive elements or cognitive structures of emotion, rather than confine or restrict cognition to a single term. 196 Therefore, on the basis of the various arguments and selected reviews presented hitherto, the following points could reasonably be taken as fundamental components of a complex cognitive theory of emotion: 1. Emotions are evaluative judgments about important things, judgments in which we appraise objects as valuable and essential to our goals (desires) of human flourishing. 2. Emotions are directed to intentional objects and register our vulnerability and passivity before parts of the world that we do not fully control. 3
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