Agency Appraisals Research Articles

Which emotions make you healthier? The effects of sadness, embarrassment, and construal level on healthy behaviors

Prior research provides inconsistent results for the effectiveness of emotions to foster healthful behaviors. Seeking to add clarity to the findings in this area, the current research examines the effects of specific emotions (sadness vs. embarrassment) on healthy behavioral intentions and the moderating role of construal level. Across four experimental studies, this research shows that specific emotions (sadness vs. embarrassment) differ on agency appraisals (Pilot Study) and affect consumers’ intentions regarding dieting (Study 1), effort(s) to quit smoking (Study 2), and physical activity (Study 3). Consistent with our theorizing, findings reveal that sadness (vs. embarrassment) increases consumers’ healthy behavioral intentions, driven by agency appraisals. Furthermore, construal level moderates the effects since abstract (vs. concrete) construal fosters more healthful behaviors when consumers feel embarrassed (vs. sad). Finally, this research makes important theoretical and practical contributions to the research on emotions, construal level, and health communication.

A comparative analysis of international health technology assessments for novel gene silencing therapies: patisiran and inotersen.

Using the case study of patisiran and inotersen, we conducted a narrative comparative analysis of the health technology assessment (HTA) agency appraisals of these two first-in-class transthyretin gene silencers, which represent exceptional advances in the treatment of hereditary transthyretin-mediated (hATTR) amyloidosis, a rare and multisystemic disease. Despite the impact of each product on the treatment landscape, the majority of HTAs are only considered standard of care as a comparator, resulting in a void of information and limited comprehension of the clinical and pharmacoeconomic differences between the two treatments. A search was conducted internationally for HTA reports, and only instances where assessment decisions for both treatments were publicly available were included in the present analysis. The HTA reports were analyzed broadly for the assessment of clinical and pharmacoeconomic evidence. Only economic models considering both patisiran and inotersen were included in this analysis. A total of nine agencies with public assessment reports for both treatments were identified. HTA agency assessments for both treatments were essentially positive; however, differences were noted in the final recommendations, place in treatment or reimbursed indications, and in the narrative of the evaluations. Only the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) assessment for patisiran evaluated an economic model comparing the two treatments. The differences summarized in this comparative analysis may provide a more comprehensive overview of the two treatments.

Impact of health technology assessment on prescribing patterns of inhaled fixed-dose combination triple therapy in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

ABSTRACT Background: Evidence suggests that triple therapy for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is being used in a broader range of patients than recommended by guidelines, which may have health and cost implications. Objective: To explore the relationship between national health technology assessment (HTA) agency appraisals and market penetration of two fixed-dose combination (FDC) triple therapies. Study design: HTAs from Q3 2017 to Q1 2020 from 10 countries were evaluated. Intervention: Glycopyrronium bromide/formoterol fumarate/beclomethasone (Trimbow®) and umeclidinium/vilanterol/fluticasone furoate (Trelegy™ Ellipta®). Main outcome measure: HTA restrictions and prescribing rates (days of therapy). Results: Seven countries (70%) imposed restrictions on use including prescription only for patients stable on free-combination triple therapy or not controlled on dual therapy, requirement of a specialist prescription or therapeutic plan, prescription only for patients with severe COPD, and use as second-line therapy or later. In general, countries that have imposed restrictions on the use of FDC triple therapies have seen a lower than average uptake. Conclusion: Payer guidance on prescribing FDC triple therapy may potentially support more appropriate prescribing in line with clinical guidelines. It is important for payers to consider which restrictions would ensure the most efficient use of scarce resources.

Investigating Emotion in Malay, Australian and Iranian Individuals with and without Depression

This study investigated the influence of culture and depression on (1) emotion priming reactions, (2) the recall of subjective experience of emotion, and (3) emotion meaning. Members of individualistic culture (Australia, n = 42) and collectivistic culture (Iran, n = 32, Malaysia, n = 74) with and without depression completed a biological motion task, subjective experience questionnaire and emotion meaning questionnaire. Those with depression, regardless of cultural group, provided significantly fewer correct responses on the biological motion task than the control group. Second, the collectivistic control groups reported greater social engaging emotion than the Australian control group. However, the three depressed groups did not differ culturally. The Australian depressed group reported significantly greater interpersonally engaging emotion than the Australian control group. Third, the collectivistic groups reported significantly greater social worth, belief changes and sharing of emotion than the individualistic group. Depression did not influence these cultural effects. Instead we found that those with depression, when compared to controls, considered emotions as subjective phenomena, that were qualifying for relationships with others, and associated with greater agency appraisals. The applicability of the biocultural framework of emotion in depression was considered.

Interaction and threshold effects of appraisal on componential patterns of emotion: A study using cross-cultural semantic data.

Studies that investigated the relation between appraisal and emotion have largely focused on the linear effect of appraisal criteria on subjective feelings (e.g., the effect of appraised goal obstruction on anger). Emotional responding can be extended to include more than just feelings, however. Componential definitions of emotion also add motivation, physiology, and expression. Moreover, a linear model is not compatible with the idea held by many appraisal theorists that appraisal criteria interact to produce emotional responding. In the present study, we modeled adaptive nonlinear interaction effects of appraisal criteria on motivation, expression, and physiology simultaneously. We applied a combination of principal component analysis for data reduction and multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) for automatic interaction identification. Data were obtained from a large-scale cross-cultural study on emotion concepts conducted in 27 countries, which represented semantic profiles of component information in 24 common emotion words. Results of modeling indicated that (a) appraisal of relevance, familiarity, goal compatibility, coping potential, and suddenness showed main effects on component responses; (b) appraisals of agency and norm compatibility uniquely showed interaction effects on component responses; (c) interaction effects explained significant variance only in some component responses but not all; and (d) the emotion patterns simulated by the fitted MARS model could be clustered according to qualitative emotion categories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A comparative study of drug listing recommendations and the decision-making process in Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK

Drug listing recommendations from health technology assessment (HTA) agencies often fail to coincide with one another. We conducted a comparative analysis of listing recommendations in Australia (PBAC), the Netherlands (CVZ), Sweden (TLV) and the UK (NICE) over time, examined interagency agreement, and explored how process-related factors—including time delay between HTA evaluations, therapeutic indication and orphan drug status, measure of health economic value, and comparator—impacted decision-making in drug coverage. Agreement was poor to moderate across HTA agency listing recommendations, yet it increased as the delay between HTA agency appraisals decreased, when orphan drugs were assessed, and when medicines deemed to provide low value (immunosuppressants, antineoplastics) were removed from the sample. International differences in drug listing recommendations seem to occur in part due to inconsistencies in how the supporting evidence informs assessment, but also to differences in how domestic priorities shape the value-based decision-making process.

Salivary nerve growth factor response to stress related to resilience

Salivary nerve growth factor (sNGF) has recently been shown to respond to psychosocial stress, but little is known about how individual differences in this neurotrophic marker relate to stress vulnerability vs. resilience. This study followed up on these initial findings by examining sNGF responses to interpersonal stress in relation to both well-being and state/trait factors that determine the way a person approaches and is impacted by stress. Young adults (n=40) gave 5 saliva samples over the course of a laboratory session that involved an interpersonal conflict stressor, and all samples were assayed for sNGF. Participants also completed self-report measures of global well-being, stress appraisals before and following the conflict, and agency. Greater sNGF reactivity to conflict related to stronger appraisals of coping ability and agency. Post-conflict sNGF recovery related to lower anticipatory stress appraisals, and to higher agency and well-being. These results support the idea that dynamic sNGF responses are adaptive. Implications for the potential role of the neurotrophic system in stress resilience are discussed.

Toward an Integrative Theory of Psychological Defense

According to theories of “psychological defense,” humans are motivated to protect themselves against various types of psychological threat, including death awareness, uncertainty, and other inherently anxiety-provoking experiences. Protective mechanisms include strengthening close relationships; maintaining appraisals of self-worth, accomplishment, and agency; and cultivating meaningful views of the world. Thus, defensiveness theories incorporate research from many areas of psychology (e.g., information-processing biases, attitudes, and interpersonal and intergroup relations), to help explain why people think, feel, and act in the diverse ways that they do. Currently, the study of psychological defense is hindered by contradictory empirical results and a proliferation of theories that make very similar predictions. This article examines a cross-section of defensiveness theories and research, highlighting conclusions that can be drawn and areas where conceptual and research problems linger. It suggests that the field needs methodological innovation (e.g., more reliable and valid manipulations and measures of unconscious constructs, more diverse methodological approaches), a more complete and reliable body of data, and some fresh new ideas from psychological scientists across disciplines.

Emotions during the transition to parenthood among substance-abusing mothers: intensity, content and intervention effects

Objectives: First, to compare multilevel emotion processing (EP) of pregnancy between substance-abusing and non-using women, and, second, to analyse whether different types of interventions can increase positive and functional EP and decrease negative and dysfunctional EP among substance-abusing mothers. EP was conceptualised according to the multifocal theory of emotions proposed by Frijda in 1986, comprising feeling states, behavioural urges to act, cognitive appraisals, and meta-emotions. Method: Participants were 101 women, 51 with substance abuse disorder and 50 comparisons. The substance-abusing women were provided with either intensive psychodynamic mother–infant group therapy (PGT; n = 25) or individually tailored psychosocial support (PSS; n = 26). All women reported their EP once during pregnancy (T1; N = 94), and twice postpartum, when the child was four (T2; N = 84) and twelve (T3; N = 76) months. Results: As hypothesised, the results indicated that the pregnancy-related EP of substance-abusing women was characterised by more negative and fewer positive feeling states, by more intense behavioural urges to act and by lower levels of cognitive appraisals of agency and predictability than the EP of the comparison women. As far as the interventions’ effects on EP, intense behavioural urges to act decreased only in the PGT group, while negative feeling states decreased and agency and predictability appraisals increased from pregnancy to postpartum in the PSS group alone. Conclusions: The importance of helping substance-abusing mothers enhance optimal emotional quality as they prepare for and enter motherhood should be emphasised.

Emotional agency appraisals influence responses to preference inconsistent information

Bringing together the literature on emotional appraisals and the literature on biased processing in judgment, two studies investigate how incidental emotions varying in valence and agency influence decision making after exposure to preference consistent vs. inconsistent information. We show that emotions differ in their response to preference inconsistent information due to their differences in self vs. other agency appraisals, whereas no emotional differences were found in response to preference consistent information. Negative emotions associated with other agency appraisals increase resistance to preference inconsistent information whereas negative emotions associated with self agency appraisals encourage acceptance of preference inconsistent information relative to neutral conditions. We show this pattern reverses for positive emotions. These effects were driven by changes in confidence after exposure to inconsistent information and reflected in evaluative judgments. We discuss the significance of these findings for the emotions, preference consistency, and decision-making literatures.

Proud Americans and lucky Japanese: Cultural differences in appraisal and corresponding emotion.

Appraisal theories of emotion propose that the emotions people experience correspond to their appraisals of their situation. In other words, individual differences in emotional experiences reflect differing interpretations of the situation. We hypothesized that in similar situations, people in individualist and collectivist cultures experience different emotions because of culturally divergent causal attributions for success and failure (i.e., agency appraisals). In a test of this hypothesis, American and Japanese participants recalled a personal experience (Study 1) or imagined themselves to be in a situation (Study 2) in which they succeeded or failed, and then reported their agency appraisals and emotions. Supporting our hypothesis, cultural differences in emotions corresponded to differences in attributions. For example, in success situations, Americans reported stronger self-agency emotions (e.g., proud) than did Japanese, whereas Japanese reported a stronger situation-agency emotion (lucky). Also, cultural differences in attribution and emotion were largely explained by differences in self-enhancing motivation. When Japanese and Americans were induced to make the same attribution (Study 2), cultural differences in emotions became either nonsignificant or were markedly reduced.

The effects of subliminal anger and sadness primes on agency appraisals.

Two studies examined whether appraisals can be differentially affected by subliminal anger and sadness primes. Participants from Singapore (Experiment 1) and China (Experiment 2) were exposed to either subliminal angry faces or subliminal sad faces. Supporting appraisal theories of emotions, participants exposed to subliminal angry faces were more likely to appraise negative events as caused by other people and those exposed to subliminal sad faces were more likely to appraise the same events as caused by situational factors. The results provide the first evidence for subliminal emotion-specific cognitive effects. They show that cognitive functions such as appraisals can be affected by subliminal emotional stimuli of the same valence.

Now That I’m Sad, It’s Hard to Be Mad: The Role of Cognitive Appraisals in Emotional Blunting

People often encounter one emotion-triggering event after another. To examine how an emotion experience affects those that follow, the current article draws on the appraisal-tendency framework and cognitive appraisal theories of emotion. The emotional blunting hypothesis predicts that a specific emotion can carry over to blunt the experience of a subsequent emotion when defined by contrasting appraisal tendencies. Results support the hypothesis: Inducing sadness blunted subsequent anger (Studies 1 and 2), and inducing anger blunted subsequent sadness (Study 2). Situational (human) agency appraisals mediated the effect of anger (sadness) on subsequent sadness (anger) elicitation (Study 2). Priming agency appraisals (Study 3) also moderated results. Finally, the effect of emotional blunting carried over to cognitive outcomes in each of the three studies. Together, the results reveal the importance of examining the sequence of emotional experiences. Implications for emotion and judgment in applied settings (e.g., the courtroom) are discussed.

Sentimental Stereotypes: Emotional Expectations for High-and Low-Status Group Members

Three vignette studies examined stereotypes of the emotions associated with high-and low-status group members. In Study 1a, participants believed that in negative situations, high-status people feel more angry than sad or guilty and that low-status people feel more sad and guilty than angry. Study 1b showed that in response to positive outcomes, high-status people are expected to feel more pride and low-status people are expected to feel more appreciation. Study 2 showed that people also infer status from emotions: Angry and proud people are thought of as high status, whereas sad, guilty, and appreciative people are considered low status. The authors argue that these emotion stereotypes are due to differences in the inferred abilities of people in high and low positions. These perceptions lead to expectations about agency appraisals and emotions related to agency appraisals. In Study 3, the authors found support for this process by manipulating perceptions of skill and finding the same differences in emotion expectations.

Appraisal Determinants of Emotions: Constructing a More Accurate and Comprehensive Theory

In order to move toward a more accurate, complete, and integrative theory of the causes of emotions, empirical evidence relevant to a recently proposed appraisal theory was examined, and hypotheses from several alternative appraisal theories were compared and tested. Given questions that focused on the cognitive causes of emotions rather than their phenomenological contents, 182 subjects rated the appraisal determinants of emotion experiences that they recalled. Results suggest that appraisals of unexpectedness (not unexpected/unexpected), situational state (motive-inconsistent/motiveconsistent), motivational state (aversive/appetitive), probability (uncertain/ certain), control potential (low/high), problem source (non-characterological/characterological factors), and agency (circumstances/other person/self), differentiate a large number of widely-discussed emotions. These results are used to formulate a revised, empirically grounded, and more comprehensive model that specifies which appraisals cause 17 ...

Appraisals of emotion-eliciting events: Testing a theory of discrete emotions.

A recent theory (Roseman, 1979,1984) attempts to specify the particular appraisals of events that elicit 16 discrete emotions. This study tested hypotheses from the latest version of the theory and compared them with hypotheses derived from appraisal theories proposed by Arnold (1960) and by Scherer (1988), using procedures designed to address some prior methodological problems. Results provided empirical support for numerous hypotheses linking particular appraisals of situational state (motive-inconsistent/motive-consistent), motivational state (punishment/reward), probability (uncertain/certain), power (weak/strong), legitimacy (negative outcome deserved/positive outcome deserved), and agency (circumstances/other person/self) to particular emotions. Where hypotheses were not supported, new appraisal-emotion relationships that revise the theory were proposed.

Shades of Joy: Patterns of Appraisal Differentiating Pleasant Emotions

Abstract Pleasant experience appears to be less emotionally differentiated than unpleasant experience. For instance, theories of emotion typically posit the existence of six or seven unpleasant emotions but often posit only one or two pleasant emotions. The present study is an attempt to systematically examine the differentiation of pleasant emotional experience. Subjects were asked to recall pleasant experiences that were associated with particular situational appraisals—appraisals of effort, agency, and certainty were systematically manipulated—and to describe their appraisals and emotions during these experiences. The results indicated that positive emotions, and their associated appraisals, are somewhat less differentiated than negative emotions, but nonetheless provided evidence of considerable differentiation among six pleasantly toned emotions (interest, hope/confidence, challenge, tranquillity, playfulness, and love). Each of these latter emotions was experienced differentially across the appraisa...