[Aleader-dev] Roseman96

[Joshua N Pritikin]

Cc: "William L. Jarrold" <address@hidden>

On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 03:51:04PM +0530, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:
> I will offer some comments on Roseman soon though, in any case.

Another big email.  :-)

Here are my reactions while reading Roseman96.  If you prefer to read
my conclusion first then skip to the bottom.  I've tried to organize
my thoughts into three categories:

1. How Roseman's appraisal maps to Aleader's appraisal.
2. What I agree with or don't understand.
3. How Aleader's appraisal maps to Roseman's appraisal.

+++ + +++

Here we go:

1. How Roseman's appraisal maps to Aleader's appraisal.

+ The appraisal of probability corresponds pretty well with Aleader's
concept of tension.

+ The appraisal of "an event's control or influence potential by the
self" corresponds to Aleader's appraisal of intensity.  I am still
refining the exact method of appraising intensity.  Perhaps intensity
is the most subtle component among Aleader's menu of appraisals.
Maybe KR is needed to help me get rigorous.

+ I am confused by the terms "positive emotion" and "negative
emotion".  It seems tautological that "improving things" is positive
and "made worse" is negative.  On the other hand, I acknowledge that
some way is needed to differentiate positive & negative emotions.  I
guess this roughly corresponds to Aleader's appraisal of individual
intention.

+ The appraisals of causation by self and causation by other are
represented implicitly in Aleader when the intention of two
individuals are combined to form the situational intention.

2. What I agree with or don't understand.

Agree with:

+ I agree that the appraisal of "whether one can cope with an event"
is not relevant for differentiating emotion.

+ The appraisal of legitimacy and problem source are not represented
in Aleader because the emotions which they differentiate are
considered composite / sequential emotion patterns.  Superficially,
I do not see a problem with modelling these emotion patterns,
but I have not attempted it.

+ I think that surprise could be modelled in an Aleader as a sequence:
tension != relaxed then phase = after. (Don't worry about it if you
don't understand my notation.  Surprise is just one emotion.  We can
come back to it later.)

Don't understand:

+ The idea of "motivational state" just seems confusing.  Maybe I
don't understand what it is suppose to mean.  I guess I agree that
motivational state needs some revision, as noted on page 261.

+ I'm not sure whether I understand the appraisal "causation by
circumstances". Somehow it seems related to probability, but maybe
not.

3. How Aleader's appraisal maps to Roseman's appraisal.

Aleader's appraisal has five main components: initiator, intention,
phase, tension, and intensity.

+ Both tension and intensity are well represented in Roseman's model,
as noted above.

+ Intention is somewhat represented, but Aleader's method of appraising
intention is more complex than Roseman's.

+ Aleader appraises phase. I didn't find phase in Roseman's model.  If
you recall my eariler email, a precise explanation of "phase" can be
found at the end of KM's situation manual.

+ I did not find anything about initiator in Roseman's model.  Perhaps
this is due to his experimental methodology.  The subjects are asked
write about an event in which they were a participant.  Therefore, the
point of view will usually (always?) be the subject's point of view.
To contrast, in Aleader there is no preset preference among the two
participants' point of view.

W Jarrold wrote:
> i believe there is a hole in the literature.  there is a more general
> class of concepts that should be called "affective states".  emotions
> are a focused subclass of these.  ambandoned is a classic affective
> state which is not an emotion.

Now I understand what you are talking about.  Yes, I agree.  Many of
Aleader's "emotions" are not what people typically expect as an
emotion.  While Roseman seems to stick with a more traditional
definition of emotion, Aleader follows the affective state idea.
However, instead of inventing a term "affective state", I re-defined
emotion to mean what you call "affective state".  I still remain
undecided whether it is better to introduce a new term or to re-define
"emotion".  I don't think emotion is very well defined (in general)
and "affective state" is a mouth-full.  What do you think?

OK, I suppose I should write some sort of conclusion now.

Despite confidence in my own introspection & creativity, I had quite a
lot of anxiety approaching this type of article.  What if Aleader's
appraisal model included a bunch of factors which turned out to have
poor empirical performance?  That would be a problem.  Now my worry is
mostly finished.  It is not always easy to gauge the similarity of
appraisal questions, but I find that my intuition is mostly supported
by the numbers.  I look forward to reviewing OCC.

-- 
.. Sensual .. Perceptual .. Cognitive .. Emotional .. Oh My!