THE EXPERIENCE OF EMOTION: SITUATIONAL INFLUENCES ON THE ELICITATION AND EXPERIENCE OF EMOTIONS

The experience of emotions and affects is a pervasive aspect of our life. We all feel well or moody on a particular day, are impatient or pleased with something we are doing and experience happiness at a compliment or anger at a slight. The present paper discusses the social context influences on the elicitation and experience of emotions from the point of view of appraisal theories. Appraisal theories of emotions posit cognitive evaluations of such aspects of the emotion eliciting event as its novelty and pleasantness, the degree to which it helps or hinders ongoing plans and goals, the degree to which individuals believe themselves able to cope with the event, the degree to which what happened appears just and unjust, etc. Yet, the outcome of these appraisals as well as the behavioral consequences of the outcomes are not the same for everyone and a number of situational influences have been found to be of importance in this context. In this paper I argue that these factors not only exert influence on the display and labeling of emotions but also modulate the appraisal process.