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LIT-1457: The Emotion Process: Event Appraisal and Component Differentiation

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StatusActive — read 2026-10-23 (NOTE-1106): in full, from the PDF Annual Reviews serves to guest readers. Worth reading as the latest review of the component process model's evidence, organised by appraisal criterion rather than by emotion category. Its paths run from appraisal to action tendencies, to physiological responses and to expression. It separates intrinsic valence from goal congruence and reports the few studies that pull them apart: they have partly different physiological signatures and combine multiplicatively. It ends with a two-threshold proposal: coherence among components above one threshold starts an episode, and above a second it becomes aware. It does not describe appraisal as a negotiation among perspectives.
Tagsemotion-and-affect, cognition, motivation
SupportsCLAIM-433 — The potential account of valence is an account of goal-conduciveness valence, not of intrinsic pleasantness: on the component process model's separation of levels of valence, the ordering that prevails ranks states by need satisfaction and goal attainment, the potential's strength tracks 'wanting' and its sign tracks goal conduciveness, while 'liking' is a separate appraisal with its own ordering; so the wanting–liking dissociation is two valence systems coming apart, as that separation predicts, and the objection that the account is not about pleasure is conceded rather than answered
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1106 — The Emotion Process: Event Appraisal and Component Differentiation

Graph View

Klaus R. Scherer & Agnes Moors (2019), Annual Review of Psychology 70:719–745 — DOI-10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011854

Key takeaways

  • A process, not categories (pp. 720–722). Elicitation by appraisal drives differentiation (action tendencies, physiology, expression), then integration into a central representation (feeling), then optional categorisation and labelling. Most links are bidirectional; the model has “a high degree of recursiveness” (p. 722, Figure 1).
  • Two valences (p. 725). “Valence is used as an overarching concept covering both (a) intrinsic valence (or pleasantness), which is the appraisal of a stimulus as merely positive or negative, and (b) valence that derives from goal congruence”. Few studies separate them.
  • Where they come apart (pp. 730–734). Intrinsic valence acts more on facial EMG; goal congruence on skin conductance and temperature, and in the voice on energy, f0 and duration. The two “combined multiplicatively” (p. 730). Intrinsic valence is processed earlier.
  • Control and power (pp. 726–728, 731, 734). High control goes with approach, activity and, under social power, aggression; low with avoidance and passivity. Goal congruence effects on the face are “amplified” when control is high (p. 732).
  • Two thresholds (p. 737). An episode starts when coherence among components rises “beyond a certain threshold”, and “a person will become aware of an altered state after a second threshold of coherence has been reached.”
  • Measures (p. 738). Coherence needs time-series modelling; a function-on-function regression of EEG against EMG (Rügamer et al. 2017) is the example given. The feeling component itself “has been neglected” (p. 739).

Standing in the record

Filed on 2026-10-23 for the record’s potential account (CLAIM-440) and its felt-valence candidate (CLAIM-439). NOTE-1106 asks whether the review already describes appraisal as a negotiation among perspectives. It does not, though it holds most of the ingredients. It is also the best source the record has for physiological markers that tell intrinsic valence from goal congruence.

No instruction for machine-learning practice; nothing here belongs in the anthology.

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