emotional-relevance appraisal

A <cognitive representation> of the emotional relevance of an object or event to the organism.

An evaluation of a phenomenon or event's relevance and significance to oneself.

Appraisals are a part of emotion processes, representing how a triggering stimulus is relevant to oneself. Appraisal captures the ‘aboutness’ of an emotion process. For instance, a stimulus (the image of a tiger) can produce different emotion processes depending on how the relevance of this stimulus is evaluated. The image of a tiger on TV would not be evaluated as dangerous. However, the image of a tiger two meters away from a person would be relevant to a person in terms of its dangerousness. Therefore, the appraisal of the dangerousness of the tiger would be part of the emotion process 'fear'. There is no intended sequence of the entities that are part of the emotion process (e.g., an appraisal does not necessarily precede a physiological process part of the emotion process).

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Mechanisms of Action