nucleation

LIT-1872: The Appraisal Basis of Anger: Specificity, Necessity, and Sufficiency of Components

2 min read

Properties3
StatusActive — read in full 2026-10-30 (NOTE-1423), from the published PDF deposited in KU Leuven's repository Lirias (lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/96184). Two recall studies (110 school students, 100 university students) in which people described unpleasant situations where an appraisal or action tendency was present, or absent, and rated their emotions. Anger went with other accountability and unfairness, but no appraisal, nor the antagonistic action tendency, was singly necessary or sufficient for it; every anger report in study 2 had at least one of the components. The authors conclude for a "contingent association". The design manipulates which memories are recalled and measures by self-report, and the authors make no causal claim.
Tagsemotion-and-affect, cognition
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1423 — Kuppens, Van Mechelen, Smits & De Boeck — The appraisal basis of anger

Graph View

Peter Kuppens, Iven Van Mechelen, Dirk J. M. Smits & Paul De Boeck (2003). Emotion 3(3), 254–269. DOI 10.1037/1528-3542.3.3.254.

Key takeaways

From the reading, NOTE-1423.

  • A test of necessity and sufficiency. Componential theories assume strong links between emotions and appraisals, and some (Smith and Lazarus; Roseman and Smith; Frijda’s definition of emotion as change in action readiness) imply necessity. Instructing people to recall situations where a component was absent allows a test.
  • Anger has a distinctive pattern. Other accountability (specific to anger), unfairness and, in study 2, wanting to express opposition go with anger; control does not.
  • No component is necessary or sufficient. Asymmetric phi indices were well below 1 for every component, in both studies and under every dichotomization.
  • At least one is needed. In study 2, every situation reported as angry had at least one of the five components present.
  • Self-report throughout. The manipulation is an instruction about what to recall; appraisals, action tendency and emotion are all self-rated.

Standing in the record

Filed on 2026-10-30 for THEORY-055, Frijda’s appraisal account. Its promote_when says correlations between appraisal reports and emotion labels “cannot settle it”; this paper’s design is a sharper version of that kind of evidence, not an escape from it. It carries no instruction for machine-learning practice.

Backlinks