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Appraisal Processes In Emotion, Phoebe C. Ellsworth, Klaus R. Scherer

Book Chapters

Usually, people's emotions arise from their perceptions of their circumstances-immediate, imagined, or remembered. This idea has been implicit in many philosophical treatments of emotions (e.g., in Aristotle, Spinoza, and even Descartes and James; see Ellsworth 1994a; Gardiner, Clark-Metcalf, & Beebe-Centa, 1980; Scherer, 2000) and explicit in some (e.g., Hume and Hobbes), and it is the central emphasis of current appraisal theories of emotion. Thinking and feeling are inextricably interrelated most of the time: Certain ways of interpreting one's environment are inherently emotional, few thoughts are entirely free of feelings, and emotions influence thinking. Reason and passion are not independent domains, …