Discriminating emotions from appraisal-relevant situational information: Baseline data for structural models of cognitive appraisals

Cognitive emotion theorists assume that the quality of emotions is deter-mined by the appraisal of the eliciting states of affairs. Accordingly, a central criterion for the evaluation of structural models of cognitive appraisal is their capacity to discriminate between emotions on the basis of the proposed appraisal dimensions. It is suggested that a good model should approximate subjects ' "natural " ability to distinguish emotions on the basis of appraisal-relevant situational information. Corresponding data for 23 common emo-tions, which can serve as a baseline for the evaluation of cognitive appraisal theories, are reported, and various factors that may have deflated the discrimination rates obtained so far in empirical studies are discussed