Nico H. Frijda

Emotion, cognitive structure, and action tendency

Abstract In current cognitive emotion theory emotional experiences are described as particular types of cognitive structures. Two studies are reported that test an implication of this theory, namely, the prediction that intuitive similarity of emotion or mood states corresponds with similarity between such structures. Cognitive structures of different emotions (“appraisal profiles”) were obtained by having subjects rate a number of emotions or mood words as to presence of a number of appraisal components. Intuitive similarity measures consisted of correlations between mood adjective questionnaire items and (in Study 2) outcomes of a word sorting task. High correspondence was found between appraisal profile similarities and intuitive similarities. Exploratory analyses confirmed the importance of several appraisal components discussed in the literature and provided tentative evidence for some additional ones. In a third study, the hypothesis was explored that cognitive structures of emotions also include re...

The social roles and functions of emotions

(from the chapter) discuss the ways in which the sociocultural environment can be expected to influence the emotional processes, the roles and functions of these processes in social interaction, and the influences of the sociocultural environment upon those roles and functions / discuss the modes of influence on emotions of the immediate context of social interaction in which emotions arise and of the values, norms, and cognitive customs prevalent in a given culture / briefly outline the conception of emotions that guides our analysis

The place of appraisal in emotion

Abstract The concept of “appraisal” has been used in the literature in a dual way: to refer to the content of emotional experience, as well as to the cognitive antecedents of emotions. I argue that appraisal in the former sense is what is contained in information in self-reports and that this information is of limited use for making inferences on emotion antecedents. This is so because emotional experience may contain appraisals that are part of the emotional response rather than belonging to its causes. They often result from elaboration of the experience after it has begun to be generated. Although in most or all emotions some cognitive appraisal processes are essential antecedents, these processes may be much simpler than self-reports (and the semantics of emotion words) may suggest. The appraisal processes that account for emotion elicitation can be assumed to be of a quite elementary kind.

Cognitive perspectives on emotion and motivation

I Motivation and Goal-Setting.- 1. Motivation and Emotion from a Biological Perspective.- 2. Self-Regulation of Motivation and Action through Goal Systems.- 3. A Motivational Approach to Volition: Activation and De-activation of Memory Representations Related to Uncompleted Intentions.- II Antecedents of Emotion.- 4. Criteria for Emotion-Antecedent Appraisal: A Review.- 5. Preattentive Processes in the Generation of Emotions.- 6. A State-Based Approach to the Role of Effort in Experience of Emotions.- 7. What are the Data of Emotion?.- III Cognitive Effects of Emotion And Motivation.- 8. Emotional and Motivational Determinants of Attention and Memory.- 9. The Instrumental Effects of Emotional Behavior - Consequences for the Physiological State.- 10. Emotion and Argumentation in Expressions of Opinion.- 11. Anxiety and the Processing of Threatening Information.- IV AI Models of Emotions.- 12. Artificial Intelligence Models of Emotion.- 13. Subjective Importance and Computational Models of Emotions.- 14. Plans and the Communicative Function of Emotions: A Cognitive Theory.- V Culture and Language of Emotion.- 15. The Semantics of the Affective Lexicon.- 16. Ethnographic Perspectives on the Emotion Lexicon.- VI Exercise in Synthesis.- 17. A Unifying Information Processing System: Affect and Motivation as Problem-Solving Processes.

Emotions and respiratory patterns : review and critical analysis

The literature on emotions and respiration is reviewed. After the early years of experimental psychology, attention to their relationship has been sparse, presumably due to difficulties in adequate measurement of respiration. The available data suggest nevertheless that respiration patterns reflect the general dimensions of emotional response that are linked to response requirements of the emotional situations. It is suggested that the major dimensions are those of calm-excitement, relaxation-tenseness, and active versus passive coping. Research on the emotion-respiration relationships has been largely restricted to the correlates of respiration rate, amplitude, and volume. Finer distinctions than those indicated may well be possible if a wider range of parameters, such as the form of the respiratory cycle, is included in the investigation.

Gender differences in behaviour: Activating effects of cross-sex hormones

The relative contribution of organizing and activating effects of sex hormones to the establishment of gender differences in behaviour is still unclear. In a group of 35 female-to-male transsexuals and a group of 15 male-to-female transsexuals a large battery of tests on aggression, sexual motivation and cognitive functioning was administered twice: shortly before and three months after the start of cross-sex hormone treatment. The administration of androgens to females was clearly associated with an increase in aggression proneness, sexual arousability and spatial ability performance. In contrast, it had a deteriorating effect on verbal fluency tasks. The effects of cross-sex hormones were just as pronounced in the male-to-female group upon androgen deprivation: anger and aggression proneness, sexual arousability and spatial ability decreased, whereas verbal fluency improved. This study offers evidence that cross-sex hormones directly and quickly affect gender specific behaviours. If sex-specific organising effects of sex hormones do exist in the human, they do not prevent these effects of androgen administration to females and androgen deprivation of males to become manifest.

Emotions and beliefs: how feelings influence thoughts

Few people would question nowadays that emotions influence beliefs but until recently little scientific research has been done on exactly how this effect takes place. This important new book, with contributions from some of the leading figures in the study of emotion, explores the relationship between emotions and beliefs from a number of different psychological perspectives. Combining theory with research, it seeks to develop coherent theoretical principles for understanding how emotions influence the content and strength of an individuals beliefs and their resistance or openness to modification. This book will prove an invaluable resource for all those interested in emotion.

Feelings and emotions: The Amsterdam symposium

Emotions are central to human behavior and experience. Yet scientific theory and research during most of the twentieth century largely ignored the emotions until a quite dramatic change that took place during its last thirty years, which witnessed an upsurge of interest in emotions in a number of disciplines. Just after the turn of the century therefore seemed to be an appropriate time to take stock of current scientific reflection on emotions. This book arose from the twenty-four keynote papers presented at a symposium held in June 2001 that bore the same title. The aim of that meeting was to review the current state of the art of research on emotions from a multidisciplinary perspective. Each chapter here is authored by an acknowledged authority in the respective field. Together they provide an overview of what is currently being studied and thought about the emotions in disciplines ranging from neurophysiology and experimental psychology to sociology and philosophy.

Recognition of Emotion

Publisher Summary Recognition of emotion may be intuitive and immediate; this does not preclude the intervention of much knowledge and experience. It may consist of phenomenally immediate integrations in simple or well-known situations. Recognition of emotion often consists of conscious hypotheses and self-corrections, and it often involves explicit inferential activities, utilizations of former experiences, and reasonings by analogy. Based largely upon immediate appreciation of the positional, relational meaning of expressive behavior, recognition of emotion is a complex process that may vary from the immediately evident to the fully conscious making of plausible guesses. This applies, in particular, when one understands, or tries to understand, other peoples inner experiences. To explain this puzzling human possibility, the classical theories of reasoning by analogy or empathy have been developed. Critics of these theories have objected that in most instances, nothing of the sort seems to occur. They are right, because perceiving the positional aspects of behavior seen in a situation does not involve attribution of inner experience or the cognitive activities necessary for it. However, when a gap exists between behavior and the meaning of the environment, such attribution may occur.

Can computers feel? Theory and design of an emotional system

Abstract Emotions can be regarded as the manifestations of a system that realises multiple concerns and operates in an uncertain environment. Taking the concern realisation function as a starting point, it is argued that the major phenomena of emotion follow from considerations of what properties a subsystem implementing that function should have. The major phenomena are: the existence of the feelings of pleasure and pain, the importance of cognitive or appraisal variables, the presence of innate, pre-programmed behaviours as well as of complex constructed plans for achieving emotion goals, and the occurrence of behavioural interruption, disturbance and impulse-like priority of emotional goals. The system properties underlying these phenomena are facilities for relevance detection of events with regard to the multiple concerns, availability of relevance signals that can be recognised by the action system, and facilities for control precedence, or flexible goal priority ordering and shift. A computer progr...