The question
CLAIM-039 maps Frijda’s characterization onto an organization: an emotion is a mode of action readiness. The record holds a rival account of what makes instances one emotion: the perceiver’s concept, grouping variable instances. Applied to organizations, the two give different answers about what an attribution of corporate anger tracks. On the first, it tracks a state of the firm. On the second, it partly constitutes the category. The question asks which, for organizations.
Why the record needs it
CLAIM-039 states its characterization in Frijda’s concept, action readiness with control precedence (TERM-094). If THEORY-057 is right about emotion categories in general, CLAIM-039 inherits a perceiver-relativity it does not state. “The firm is angry” would then be true by a community’s concept, as weeds are weeds. QUESTION-049 raises the same tracking-or-shaping split for corporate knowledge and intention. This raises it for affect, where the record already holds the two sides.
What the record holds
- THEORY-057: emotion categories are “populations of variable instances grouped by the perceiver’s concepts”. The two accounts differ on “whose function does the grouping”. Limit: one theoretical paper, with no test of appraisal predictions.
- THEORY-055: an appraisal “elicits the emotion, as a state of action readiness, and emotions differ by their mode of action readiness”. That puts the grouping in the agent. Limit: argued, not tested. CLAIM-039 uses its concept (TERM-094), not this account.
What would answer it
A mode of action readiness, defined for organizations, that is present across firms called angry in varied contexts and absent in others. That would favour THEORY-055. Or attributions of corporate emotion that shift with the attributors’ concepts while the firm’s readiness is held fixed, which would favour THEORY-057.
Note of 2026-10-18: a minimal affect sidesteps part of the split
A27 §6 wrote the compressed self-description an organization may adopt: “The organization is threatened. The organization wants to avoid the threat. The organization is afraid.” That is this question’s attribution, and A27 cited constructed-emotion theory only outside the record; THEORY-057 is the record’s reading of it.
The owner’s correction at U28, “‘fear’ is too specific. ‘distress’ is probably a lot easier to reason about within our framework”, and the move at U33 from distress to frustration (CLAIM-368), sidestep part of this question. A regulation-defined condition, a failure to maintain or jointly realize what the organization maintains, is fixed by the organization’s demands and capacities, not by an attributor’s category. The Frijda/Barrett split then returns only at the step from that condition to a named emotion. Neither the exchange nor the record had said so. The sidestep holds only if the demands are the organization’s own. A28 conceded that its measure’s “interpretation depends on how K, costs, timescales, and admissible policies are chosen”, and a choice made by whoever measures brings the attributor back in (CLAIM-288, THEORY-628).
A27’s Experiment A, collective fear without uniformly fearful members, in four conditions crossing internal coordination with a unified collective report, is a design for this question’s first alternative. Whether the line reopens is the owner’s decision.