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Comment: Language and Dimensionality in Appraisal Theory

Ronald de Sousa
Emotion Review 2013 5: 171
DOI: 10.1177/1754073912468169
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468169
2013

EMR5210.1177/1754073912468169Emotion Reviewde Sousa Language and Dimensionality

Comment

Comment: Language and Dimensionality

in Appraisal Theory

Emotion Review
Vol. 5, No. 2 (April 2013) 171175
The Author(s) 2013
ISSN 1754-0739
DOI: 10.1177/1754073912468169
er.sagepub.com

Ronald de Sousa

Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, Canada

Abstract
The proliferation of dimensions of appraisal is both welcome and worrying.
The preoccupation with sorting out causes may be somewhat otiose. And
the ubiquity of emotions in levels of processing raises intriguing problems
about the role of language in identifying and triggering emotions and
appraisals.

Keywords
appraisal, dimensionality, dual processing, emotion, language, second-order
emotions, valence

Although the central insight harks back to Aristotle, Spinoza,

Hume, and Sartre (Moors, Ellsworth, Scherer, & Frijda, 2013,
p. 119), the term was brought to the forefront of emotion theory
by Magna Arnold, who suggested that emotion could be equated
with felt tendency toward anything intuitively appraised as
good (beneficial), or away from anything intuitively appraised as
bad (harmful) (Arnold, 1960, p. 171). Such felt tendencies
typically involve beliefs or perceptions; they give rise to action
tendencies, as has been emphasized especially eloquently by
Nico Frijda (1986, 2007); action tendencies require physiological preparations; and the combination of those factors gives rise
to visible expressions. Thus the central insight of appraisal theory makes room for the five components that are widely
acknowledged as definitive of emotions: cognition, subjective
feeling, characteristic physiological changes, action tendency,
and expression. What is beneficial or harmful depends on the
needs of the individual; and while the term needs is vague
enough to apply to any living thing, it is usually replaced by
concerns, which include not just organismic needs but everything that an individual cares about (Moors et al., 2013, p. 120,
citing Frankfurt, 1988). Only humans can make their preferences
explicit. Yet both learned and innate preferences give rise to tacit
appraisals that we have in common with other animals.
That raises questions about the extent to which appraisals
can be identified independently of language; the role of

language will be one issue taken up here. For human individuals, almost anything can be a matter of concern, for as
soon as we start talking, we can generate an indefinite number
of new values, including ethical and aesthetic values, most of
which are no longer directly traceable to organismic needs
(de Sousa, 2007). That implies that our understanding of
emotion is intimately linked to our conception of value; but
how many sorts of value are there? What is meant, in particular, by speaking of dimensions, either of appraisal in general
or of valence in particular? That will be another area on which
I have questions. A third will be the question of the role of
causality. I take these up in reverse order, and conclude with
some additional questions about second-order appraisals and
emotions.

Causality
The relation of causality to conceptual connection has given
rise to much confusion. Moors (2013) careful discussion of the
question whether appraisals cause emotions or constitute emotions clears up the muddle very nicely. She examines a number
of interpretations of the claim that appraisals are causally
involved in emotions, and defends it against objections. In the
end, she finds a sensible way, based on a distinction between
the process and the output of appraisal, of evading the apparent
incompatibility of the causal claim with the competing thesis
that appraisals are definitionally tied to emotions. She concludes that there is no conflict between saying that the
appraisal process causes the appraisal output, which in turn,
causes the other components and claiming that the appraisal
output and the other components may be part of the content of
feelings (Moors, 2013, p. 138). And she sensibly points out
that causal relations between the various so-called components
of emotion remain an interesting area of research.
As if to answer her prayer, Scherers (2013) compact diagram in Figure 1, showing a forest of causal influences and
feedback loops between different levels of appraisal, seems to

Corresponding author: Ronald de Sousa, Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, 170 St. George St., Rm. 424, Toronto, Ontario M5R 2M8, Canada.
Email: sousa@chass.utoronto.ca

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172 Emotion Review Vol. 5 No. 2

have the right order of complexity. It can be grasped in theory,

but that level of intricacy is susceptible to being implemented
only by the subpersonal, nonexplicit levels of brain activity, and
to being understood only by computer analysis: those are features of the intuitive processing system as opposed to the
analytic, as I shall discuss in what follows.
I suspect, however, that the preoccupation with questions of
causation might be unhelpful. Here is one reason. Moors (2013)
refers to the very appealing three-tiered model proposed by
David Marr (1982) for understanding a complex system. But
Marrs model, especially when applied to biological systems
rather than to artefacts, does not throw very much light on the
causal situation. The kludgy character of many organs suggests
that, causally speaking, some prior configuration determined the
organs design. In some other cases, the algorithmic level, concerned with the system of representation used by the organ,
might be causally crucial. Yet the most important level for understanding is what Marr calls the computational level, which
requires us to understand what the thing is meant to do. Ellsworth
(2013) hints that the distinction between being a cause and an
ingredient is sometimes a matter of perspective. Indeed. It may
be useful to recall that for Aristotle, the material cause and the
efficient cause were just two of four modes required for a complete explanation. One also needed to know what something was
made of, its material cause, to have a functional understanding
or final cause, as well as insight into the essence of the phenomenon or formal cause. While it is important to know what
we are talking about at any particular moment, many philosophers have come to think that discussions of essence too often
reduce to mere semantics. In most cases, it is quite appropriate to
speak, as Ellsworth does, of correlates of appraisal (p. 126),
without needing to specify how these correlations come about
before specifying the precise explanatory goals to be served.
Almost a century ago, Bertrand Russell (1918) argued that
causation is not a scientific notion. It belongs to what we now
call folk psychology, ruled by the practicalities of intervening in
complex processes (Hacking, 1983). What caused the match to
light? Its being struck on a rough surface, we say. But what
makes that useful is not that friction is the only causally necessary condition of the matchs lighting; neither is it sufficient.
Rather, unlike the presence of oxygen and the absence of excessive humidity, striking the match is the condition we are most
apt to control. An appraisal can claim to be involved in all four
of Aristotles explanatory aims: first, it is essential in that an
ascription of emotion implies at least some form of appraisal;
second, the emotion type is likely to be functionally useful in
standard circumstances; third, appraisals do seem to be ingredients in emotions; and fourth, getting a grip on the appraisal is
often our best chance of changing the course of the emotions
making them what we call efficient cause.
Once we relax about causation, we can broaden our understanding of understanding. Ellsworth (2013) writes: We can
go much farther than we have in refining appraisals, but I do not
think that we will ever develop a complete set that accounts for
all emotional experience (p. 127). But what is meant by
accounts for? One way to account for an emotion is to describe

how it unfolds. That narrative aspect of emotions is an important aspect of emotions largely left out of appraisal theories.
A Shakespeare soliloquy, or a few pages of Proust, convey in
minute detail the vicissitudes of an emotional episode in which
appraisals may change, following an arc that may have its roots
in what I have called paradigm scenarios learned in early
childhood (de Sousa, 1987). As Ellsworth suggests, these are
apt to change over time (p. 130). They are enriched and modified by countless memories, associations, analogies, and refinements in ones background value system. So it is not surprising
that when people try to describe novel emotions they typically
appeal to situations and scenarios: It was like finding out that
there was no school today; it was as though I had cheated; it
was like being betrayed (Ellsworth 2013, p. 128). In accounting for an emotion in this sense sciences role is auxiliary. Its
contribution to accounting for, in the sense of explaining, the
full details of a particular episode, consists in identifying the
parameters for which specific values are filled in according to
the particulars of each singular episode.1 That is where the
exploration of the dimensions of appraisal can be helpful, and it
is to some issues raised by dimensionality that I now turn.

The Proliferation of Dimensions

Many of the original dimensions included in Scherers (2013)
and Rosemans (2013) theory admit to many refinements.
I shall focus exclusively here on the key dimension of valence.
Aided by refinements in the understanding of the brain mechanisms of pleasure and pain (Grahec, 2007), philosophers have
cast doubt on the commonsense idea that these merely represent
what is above and below the line of indifference in a single
dimension of experience. Some have specifically taken aim at
the assumption that emotions are either positive or negative
(Kristjansson, 2003). Nevertheless, that terminology persists in
many quarters. Indeed, it is implicitly present as just one dimension in Scherers Table 1, which displays intrinsic pleasantness as the second dimension in the category of relevance.
Scherer also refers to the fundamental implications of approach
and avoidance tendencies used by Lewin as the basis for introducing the notion of valence (p. 154). But that basis, which
psychologists repeat like a religious incantation, is persuasive
only to the faithful. It is simply false that positive valence can be
defined in terms of a tendency to approach, and negative valence
in terms of a tendency to avoid. Anger is undoubtedly negatively valenced; yet an angry person will aggressively approach
the target of their anger. Entire traditions of religion and
morality have been built around the idea that what is desired
should by all means be avoided. Of course, an objector will say,
approach and avoidance must not be construed literally!
Precisely: thats what they say about faith. Psychologists who
insist on it must explain why their conception of approach and
avoidance isnt just identified by definition with positive and
negative valence respectively.
In the light of these problems, it is gratifying to find Scherer
(2013) breaking up the supposed unity of valence into at least
six types of qualitatively different valences (p. 154). But one of

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de Sousa Language and Dimensionality 173

those dimensions itself illustrates the point I have just made.

According to Scherer (2013, Table 2), familiarity is listed as a
dimension of valence. But is it familiarity or surprise that is correlated with approach? Surprise captures attention: that would
seem to be a form of approach. On the other hand, it is familiarity that is coded as positively valenced in Scherers scheme.
One could similarly quibble about whether self-worthiness is
something to be approached or something to be avoided. You
could see it both ways, like the duckrabbit illusion.
One more detail, Scherer (2013, p. 152) remarks that the un/
pleasantness of some stimuli is intrinsic to the stimulus, that is,
that it does not depend on the motivational state of the appraiser.
(Just a few lines down he mitigates this, using the phrase
largely independent of the motivational state, p. 152). This
seems to be contradicted by the familiar example of the athlete
who does not notice, until after the end of the race, that she has
been seriously wounded. It would be daunting to devise an
experiment in which you caused a major laceration in the midst
of a subjects extreme physical exertion, obtain an appraisal of
its effects at the time, and then compare that appraisal to one
made later in tranquillity. The answer presumably lies with the
consideration that in the case of the athlete, the motivational
state suppresses, rather than conditions, perception of the states
intrinsic unpleasantness. But the nature of whatever underlying
mechanisms are involved and the difference between them seem
to be further issues that require investigation.
More generally, it seems somewhat arbitrary to limit the number of valence dimensions to six. In addition to self-worthiness
and moral worthiness, why is there not a distinction to be made
between both of those and prudential worthiness? And within
long-term prudential worthiness, should one not distinguish the
short-term from the long-term? The problem here is that the
very word valence is more or less equivalent (in meaning as
well as in etymology) to value. And value, as many philosophers have stressed, admits to an indefinite number of dimensions that can clash in practice despite having equally
impregnable claims to being genuinely worthy (Berlin, 1958;
Williams, 1986). So to open up the dimension of valenceand
certainly it does seem to require to be opened upis to expose
oneself to the prospect of a proliferating pullulation of potential
dimensions.

Emotions and Language

Ellsworth (2013) highlights the problem of the connection
between the psychological reality of emotions and the linguistic
repertoire of emotion words. Structurally, the vast multidimensional space of appraisals in which specific emotions find their
place is a chaotic dynamic one (Lewis, 2005; Magai & HavilandJones, 2002). Such spaces typically have attractors. The
named emotions can be regarded as identifying those attractors:
the words of a language may act as magnets in the multidimensional universe of appraisals (Ellsworth 2013, p. 128). The
impressive results obtained in the GRID study conducted by
Scherer and his collaborators (Fontaine, Scherer, & Soriano, in
press) suggests that some cross-cultural commonalities exist to

ground a widely shared, if not universal, localization of attractors in the vast space of possible emotions. But that structure, in
turn, requires an explanation: Why those points and not others?
We have a limited vocabulary to designate some types of
weather, mental health, and colours (Ellsworth, 2013), but these
obviously pick out only a very few salient types. If we turn
inwards and try to experience our own emotional state in its rich
specificity, we dont need to use words, though we very likely
will be tempted to use words, if only because the habit of verbal
categorization leads to quick and efficient ways of deciding
what, if anything, one should do. (But as soon as we are asking
what to do, we are no longer simply attending to the character of
our own inner experience.) But it is in social life that most emotions have their being, not merely because they arise in social
situations, but because conversation is among the chief activities conducted socially. Conversation is driven by four goals
that we can conveniently sum up as PEGGing: Predicting,
explaining, generalizing, and gossip. Gossip, according to persuasive evidence marshalled by Robin Dunbar (1993), played
an important role in the development of our brains during that
period of our ancestors evolution in which groups became too
large for everyone to groom one another efficiently. Dunbar
estimates that gossip takes up about 60% of all conversation;
others have found it to be closer to 80% to 90% (Elmer, 1994,
p. 131). For the purposes of PEGGing, we need labels that function in the sort of way described by Eleanor Rosch (Rosch &
Lloyd, 1979), referring to prototypes easily recognizable in
terms of intuitively perceived family resemblance rather than
clear lists of necessary and sufficient conditions. The so-called
basic emotions will tend to be those which can be identified
from the outside, in terms of the scenarios that embody them,
rather than in terms of the feelings of the emoters. If a man with
a knife lurches towards another man, our inclination to attribute
anger to the first and fear to the second in no way depends on
having interviewed either man concerning the profile of his
appraisals. If Ys spouse X has discovered that Y has slept with
Z, X may, in actual fact, experience any of a very large and disparate range of emotions. Which it is could hardly be discovered
without asking. Most observers wont bother; they will attribute
jealousy to X and assume they are thereby entitled to predict
what X is likely to do, to explain how X actually responded, and
to be understood when they gossip about itall in virtue of generalizations widely taken to be axiomatic. Labelled emotions, in
short, are those that are salient because they are particularly useful for the purposes of PEGGing. That implies that the categories in question are not, in fact, primarily psychological, but
social; and it seems quite compatible with the result of the GRID
study that attributes particular importance to the four dimensions of valence, power/control, arousal, and unpredictability
(or novelty; Scherer, 2013, p. 154).

Levels of Processing
A broader issue about the role of language in appraisal and emotion concerns the contribution of various levels of processing.
Moors (2013) writes that

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174 Emotion Review Vol. 5 No. 2

appraisal theorists generally agree that various mechanisms can underlie

appraisal and that they can operate on a wide range of representations:
conceptual and/or propositional versus perceptual and/or embodied;
symbolic versus subsymbolic; locationist versus distributed. appraisal
often proceeds automatically (i.e., uncontrolled in the promoting or
counteracting sense, unconscious, efficient, and/or fast) but can also
sometimes proceed nonautomatically. (p. 120)

This, together with her allusion to dual mode and triple

mode theories (Moors et al., 2013, pp. 120122), suggests an
affinity with the dual processing hypothesis (Evans &
Frankish, 2009).2 Descartes had already pointed out in 1649
that those who are most violently moved by their passions are
least likely to know them (Descartes, 1649/1984, 74). In the
perspective of dual processing theory, emotions pretty clearly
demand to be classed as belonging to the intuitive system,
S1. At the same time, they are eminently susceptible to being
triggered by verbal information, which typically belongs to
S2, the analytic system. This happens not only in learning
facts that touch our concerns, but also, of course, when reading fiction. In addition, it is surely true that rule-based mechanisms can also be automatic and that the associative
mechanism can also operate on conceptual codes (Moors et
al., 2013, p. 122). Indeed, this is surely a certainty. But the
question is, how exactly is it that emotions manage in such an
elusive way to straddle the different modes? Language also
works in nonstandard ways, that is, in virtue of the associative
properties of words rather than the logical properties of sentences, as in priming effects that work below the level of
awareness to change ones moods and likely responses to other
verbal or nonverbal input; emotions are affected by both systems, even in their linguistic dependencies.
Thus emotions and appraisals navigate between the intuitive
and the analytic systems. This may be particularly important
given the role of the individual, cultural and developmental differences to which Moors et al. (2013, p. 120) allude. Much of
the process of development would seem to consist precisely in
the conversion of System 2 processes into System 1 processes
which is what overlearning amounts to. One would like to
know more about the mechanisms involved. For these reasons,
Scherers (2013) articulation of levels of processing into four
(low sensorimotor, schematic, associative, and conceptual;
p. 151) is very much to be welcomed as an advance. I find it a
little unclear, however, how the second is separate from the third,
given that both are learned, automatic, unconscious, and distinct
from both the innate first level and the S2-like fourth level.

Second-Order Appraisals
I shall end with a question that intrigues me, but that does not fit
neatly under any of the previous headings: the question of secondorder appraisals. Moors et al. (2013) point out that many events
are congruent for one concern and incongruent for another. One
both wants something and doesnt want it (p. 123). Scherers
(2013) example of drinking a fine wine forbidden for health reasons is a case in point. He notes that this type of case is rarely
studied (p. 156). It should be. So should the importantly different

case where the conflict is between a first-order and a second-order

emotion or desire. One can evaluate the very same thing as a bad
thing at the first level of appraisal and a good thing at the second
or metalevel. To borrow an example from Tim Schroeder (personal communication, June 2012), one can suffer the pain of punishment while deeming it to be justified. That could be described
as being bad in the light of one concern (present pleasure) and
good in the light of another (justice). But it is quite different from
the conflict of those same two concerns when the question is, say,
whether to spend my money on expensive entertainment or send it
to Amnesty International. In the former case, but not the latter, it is
the pain itself (of the punishment) that is positively appraised. This
is broached in an article by Lambie and Marcel (2002) to which
Moors et al. refer, but I dont see in the articles here reviewed that
any attention is paid to either of the two questions that can arise
about second-order appraisals: the question of the objective justification for first-order appraisalssuch questions as Is it reasonable to be frightened by an inoffensive spider?, for example, and
the question of the mechanism and the nature of self-assessment,
as in ones emotional response to ones own first-order appraisals
(How shamefully unreasonable of me to be frightened). Id love
to know more about how both these conflicts work.

Notes
1
2

For a splendid example of the way in which the narrative character of

emotion can be both illuminated by science and detailed in fiction, see
Oatley (2012).
There are many variants. Keith Stanovich (2004) lists two dozen, and
more have been formulated since. While the distinction is usefully
suggestive, the dichotomies it implies are not to be taken too rigidly
(see Moors & De Houwer, 2006).

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