Leslie Kirby, Ph.D. - US grants

The proposed research examines the utility of an integration of appraisal and motivation theories in understanding the organization of the physiological activity in emotions. Of particular interest is the construct of task engagement, and its motivational antecedents. Toward this end, there are three specific aims: (1) to refine the heretofore unidimensional construct of task engagement to reflect its separate components of attention and effort, and to explore the degree to which these separate components correspond to different parameters of autonomic activity, i.e., cardiovascular (CV) vs. skin conductance (SC) activity; (2) to examine the extent to which an integrated appraisal/motivational position can account for variability in task engagement and its associated autonomic activity; and, (3) to test whether this integrated perspective can provide a better account of the autonomic activity associated with emotion than a more traditional discrete emotions perspective. Two experiments will address these specific aims. In Experiment 1, the attentional and effort-related components of engagement will be isolated and their independent relations to SC and CV activity will be documented. In Experiment 2, motivation will be manipulated and appraisal assessed in order to model the specific relations between them; in addition, this unified model will be tested against a discrete emotions approach.

In the scholarly literature, human emotions are increasingly appreciated as representing highly context-specific responses that serve important adaptational functions at both intrapersonal and interpersonal levels. Intrapersonally, emotions are posited to serve important attention-regulatory functions, alerting the individual to adaptationally relevant events and preparing and motivating the individual to respond to those events. Interpersonally, through their physical expression, emotions are posited to communicate important information regarding the person's reactions and likely behaviors to others in the social environment. Given the importance of emotion in human functioning, it is vital to understand how emotions can be elicited in a highly context-specific manner. The ultimate goal of this line of research is to test for a causal role of appraisal, or internal evaluations, in eliciting emotional experience, and to test a key premise of a process model by examining the effects of incidentally primed appraisals on emotion and emotion-related behaviors. However, an important first step in this research is to demonstrate that appraisals can be primed effectively. Although strong effects of social priming have been found in other domains, priming of appraisals is a new research direction. Preliminary evidence suggests the feasibility of emotional priming, but this small grant will explicitly test a variety of priming manipulations, such as cognitive tasks and incidental exposure, to make sure they can effectively and uniquely prime specific appraisals. Several distinct appraisals, having specific hypothesized roles in differentiating emotional experience, will be targeted. These include appraisals of motivational relevance (an evaluation of subjective importance which determines the intensity of the emotional response), coping potential (the extent to which a person feels able to change or maintain circumstances in order to further her/his goals), and accountability (which tells the individual toward whom/what to direct coping efforts). Each targeted appraisal will be primed in two different ways, and the strength and specificity of the priming will be evaluated. The results of these studies will lay the groundwork for subsequent research that will directly test the effects of primed appraisals on emotional response. This research line will greatly strengthen the existing empirical evidence regarding the causal role of appraisal in the elicitation and differentiation of emotional experience, and further, will help provide a theoretical account of the cognitive processes underlying emotion elicitation. The development of this theoretical account in turn will have great utility for understanding the functioning of emotions more broadly through an improved understanding of the conditions and processes by which specific emotions, both adaptive and maladaptive, are elicited. Beyond the broader benefits to society to accrue from an increased understanding of emotional functioning, the proposed research will be conducted so to maximize its educational benefits. The scientific training of both undergraduate and graduate students will be advanced through their participation in data collection, analysis, and presenting the research at scientific meetings, as well as by participating in seminars that examine the theoretical underpinnings of this research.