The Appraisal-Tendency Framework
The Appraisal-Tendency Framework
The Appraisal-Tendency Framework
Abstract
This article presents the Appraisal Tendency Framework (ATF) (Lerner &
Keltner, 2000, 2001; Lerner & Tiedens, 2006) as a basis for predicting the
the ATF addresses how and why specific emotions carry over from past
situations to color future judgments and choices. After reviewing the main
assumptions and the five main principles of the framework, two streams of
has the potential to yield manifold implications for consumer judgment and
INTRODUCTION
Keltner, 2000, 2001; Lerner & Tiedens, 2006) as a general theory of emotion-
framework goes beyond common intuition and prior research, specifying, for
example, the conditions under which emotions of the same valence will have
framework. It is our hope that not only marketing researchers but also
The present paper will briefly summarize the main assumptions of the
decision making.
Feelings and Consumer Decision Making 4
on judgment and decision making. The ATF assumes that specific emotions
give rise to specific cognitive and motivational processes, which account for
the effects of each emotion upon judgment and decision making. Here we
briefly review the five principles that have emerged in empirical tests of this
framework.
and choices (for discussion, see Loewenstein & Lerner, 2003). For example,
experienced fear and anticipated regret when evaluating a gamble have been
shown to influence how much one is willing to gamble (Larrick & Boles, 1995;
Loewenstein & Lerner, 2003; Loomes & Sugden, 1982; Mellers Schwarz, Ho,
& Ritov, 1997). The second, incidental emotion, encompasses the (sometimes)
topics and objects (Bodenhausen, Kramer, & Susser, 1994; Forgas & Bower,
1988; Schwarz & Clore, 1983). Such incidental carryover occurs even when
consumer judgment and decision making, the ATF has primarily focused on
(Wilson & Brekke, 1994). In our own studies, decision-makers deny that such
influences affect their own decision making even when the evidence indicates
otherwise (Han & Lerner, 2006). In sum, the ATF concentrates on incidental
influences in order to gain leverage for making causal inferences and in order
the majority of studies within the literature on affect and judgment have
Feelings and Consumer Decision Making 6
taken a valence approach, focusing on the effects of good and bad moods upon
judgment and decision making (e.g., Bower, 1991; Isen, Shalker, Clark, &
Karp, 1978; Johnson & Tversky, 1983; Kavanagh & Bower, 1985; Mayer,
Gaschke, Braveman, & Evans, 1992; Wright & Bower, 1992). That is,
produce more positive and negative judgments respectively. Not long ago,
such as stereotyping (for review, Forgas, 2003). Some argue that valence
remains the organizing principle for emotion effects on judgment and decision
affect impairs, the value of self conceptions” (Forgas, 2003, p. 602). Although
only one dimension of emotion. The ATF harnesses the predictive power of
framework.
Feelings and Consumer Decision Making 7
argued that a range of cognitive dimensions (including, but not limited to,
effort, and responsibility. Numerous other studies have found similar results
along these dimensions, thus, provide a basis for comparing and contrasting
discrete emotions. For example, certainty and control are the central
uncertainty about what happened and situational control for negative events.
of certainty and individual control, just like anger (Averill, 1983; Smith &
1991; Frijda, 1986; Roseman, Wiest, & Swartz, 1994; Scherer, 1999, 2001).
loss (Lazarus, 1991) and thus accompanies the action tendencies to change
these cases, appraisals do not play a causal role in creating the emotion, but
(1993) have shown that emotions induced via facial muscle movements (i.e.
Feelings and Consumer Decision Making 9
anger and sadness) can give rise to appraisal tendencies that shape
recursive relationship, each making the other more likely. Because of the
appraisals that comprise that emotional state (Clore, 1994; Frijda, 1994;
role for appraisals in emotion is not a necessary condition for the ATF. It is
emotional experience and effects (also see review by Ellsworth & Scherer,
2003).
emotions not only can arise from but give rise to an implicit cognitive
event that evoked the emotion, persist beyond the eliciting situation and
Specific Emotion
Appraisal Appraisal
Dimensions Themes
Appraisal
Tendencies
Judgment or
Decision
situational control even in novel situations. Anger, on the other hand, co-
sadness and anger were found to have opposite effects (Keltner et al., 1993).
another individual.
/ low-reward option, anxious people may choose an option that reduces risk
Raghunathan and Pham (1999) tested these ideas in a study where they
or sad. Consistent with the foregoing analysis, they found that anxious
seeking option (i.e. the high-risk/high-reward job) (see also Pham, 2004) .
original statement of the ATF (Lerner & Keltner, 2000, 2001) addressed
emotion effects only on the content of thought, Lerner and Tiedens (2006)
the use of simple, heuristic judgment cues, such as the expertise of the source.
associated with uncertainty appraisals (such as fear and hope) would result
certainty emotion, by asking them to write about past events that made them
out an opinion survey designed to measure the extent to which people relied
on the heuristic source cue than anxious participants. Moreover, they found
results comparing anger vs. sadness, see Bodenhausen, Sheppard, & Kramer,
1994).
tendencies shape not only the content, but also the process, of thought.
The ATF predicts domain specificity for the effects of distinct emotions
themes of the emotion and the salient cognitive dimensions of the judgment
and choice at hand. To illustrate this matching principle, consider the case of
principle are clear. Research should compare emotions that are highly
look beyond valence of emotion and identify appraisal dimensions and themes
of discrete emotions. They are useful not only because they differentiate
because they break down emotions into cognitive elements (or dimensions)
the emotion itself wanes. There are also other ways to deactivate the
carryover even when the emotion exists experientially. The ATF points to
experientially (See Frijda, 1988). For example, Goldberg, Lerner, and Tetlock
situation remained to be solved. That is, when people learned that the
therefore, the goal of anger served -- anger did not carry over to influence
future judgments (Goldberg et al, 1999). More generally, events that lead to
the attainment of the goal associated with the original evocation of the
judgments.
of their own judgment and choice processes. For example, in a now classic
study, Schwarz & Clore (1983) demonstrated that mood effects on judgments
their judgments (for an updated review on these mechanisms, see Schwarz &
Locke, & Audrain, 1993; Gasper & Clore, 1998). More generally, emotional
one generally uses. For example, Lerner, Goldberg, and Tetlock (1998)
(i.e. bias correction) may be more the exception than the rule.1 In terms of
human mind (for review, see Wilson & Brekke, 1994). The carryover of
emotion, therefore, often goes unscreened (see also Wegener & Petty, 1997 for
further discussion on bias correction). In a recent study, for example, Han &
Lerner (2006) found that incidental disgust led decision makers to dispose of
their possessions even when participants were explicitly warned to avoid that
particular tendency.
Feelings and Consumer Decision Making 18
Assessment of Risk
perception (e.g., Holtgrave & Weber, 1993; Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee, &
Welch, 2001; Mellers, Schwartz, & Ritov, 1999; Slovic, Finucane, Peters, &
MacGregor, 2002). Lerner and Keltner (2000, 2001) applied the ATF as a
the appraisal pattern of high certainty and individual control (Smith &
1987). Fear and anger, the researchers reasoned, should therefore exert
lead to a certain number of death each year in the United States (e.g., brain
cancer, strokes, floods) (Lerner & Keltner, 2000), or to estimate the likelihood
that specific positive and negative events would occur in their own life
compared to the lives of relevant peers (Lerner & Keltner, 2001). The results
of their empirical tests were consistent with the ATF prediction: fearful
anger lie at the core of the diverging influences on risk assessment. The
situational control in new situations and thus fearful people tend to perceive
new situations and thus angry people tend to perceive less risk across new
and on optimistic risk estimates. (from Lerner & Keltner, 2001, Study
4)
confirmed and extended the prior findings. Fear increased perceived risk of
terrorism and the plans for precautionary measures whereas anger did the
opposite. Interestingly, these effects also held across non-terror related risks.
(e.g., getting the flu) (Lerner, Gonzalez, Small, & Fischhoff, 2003). Moreover,
a recent study revealed that these appraisal tendencies influenced not only
When induced one year after September 11th to experience fear about the
recollected having experienced low levels of risk during that time (Fischhoff,
Gonzalez, Lerner, & Small, 2005). Similarly, for anger, Hemenover and
Zhang (2004) demonstrated that anger made people perceive negative events
Feelings and Consumer Decision Making 21
that had already occurred more positively. That is, anger elicited a kind of
decision outcomes as well (Fessler, Pillsworth, & Flamson, 2004; Lerner &
Disease problem (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981), fearful people favored the
In sum, these studies reveal that emotions sharing the same valence –
namely fear and anger – influence risk assessment in ways that are more
appraisal tendencies.
buying and selling decisions, the role of specific emotions remains relatively
Disgust and sadness, though sharing the same valence, differ markedly in
Feelings and Consumer Decision Making 22
being too close to an indigestible object or idea (Lazarus, 1991), and thus is
avoid taking in anything new (Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley, 1993). Sadness, on
the other hand, revolves around the appraisal theme of loss (Lazarus, 1991),
upon choice prices — i.e. the amounts of cash participants are willing to
reduce, while sadness would increase, choice prices. This was presumably
because, for disgusted people, the act of buying represented a potential source
to change circumstances (by acquiring new goods). On the other hand, the
researchers reasoned that disgust and sadness would exert similar influences
on selling prices. Specifically, they expected that both disgust and sadness
would decrease selling prices. The rationale was as follows. For disgusted
The results of their empirical tests were consistent with the ATF prediction
(Figure 3).
Feelings and Consumer Decision Making 23
5
4.5
4
3.5
3 Neutral
Price
2.5 Disgust
($)
2 Sad
1.5
1
0.5
0
Selling Condition Choice Condition
Figure 3. Mean selling and choice prices (from Lerner, Small, &
Loewenstein, 2004)
hold not only with choice prices (the amount of cash participants are willing
i.e. paying money out of one’s own pocket. Results replicated and extended
would in a neutral state) even when it meant taking more money out of their
assessment of monetary value in ways that are more specific than global
that readily apply to consumer decision making. There are, however, many
Feelings and Consumer Decision Making 24
Two promising emotions for future work are compassion and pride.
pride, on the other hand, is based on a sense that the self is strong and
separate from others (Oveis, Horberg, & Keltner, 2006). Drawing on such
Oveis et. al. (2006) hypothesized that compassion and pride would exert
different influences upon the perceived similarity between self and other. To
participant (e.g. young adults, United States citizens) and those presumed to
be very different from the participant (e.g. the elderly, citizens of other
overall. Moreover, consistent with the notion that emotions influence more
the emotion (see our discussion of the matching constraint), people feeling
Importantly, the perceived similarity between the self and the other is
would discourage it. That is, when consumers are feeling compassion, they
see themselves as more like others, and therefore they may be more likely to
feeling pride, they see themselves as less like others. They may, therefore, be
more likely to resist consuming what others are consuming. In the case of
priming pride may reduce the behavior. Similarly, in the case of desirable
Another promising emotion for future work is disgust – one of the most
a series of recent studies, Han and Lerner (2006) examined the effect of
incidental disgust on the status quo bias. The status quo bias, the tendency
for people to prefer status quo options over other options (see Samuelson &
Feelings and Consumer Decision Making 26
Zeckhauser, 1988), is one of the most robust and powerful forces in consumer
hypothesized that disgust would make people trade away a status quo
commodity for another commodity, eliminating the status quo effect. They
choice between a status quo object and a new object after having been
new commodity (i.e. a highlighter set) at a higher rate than those in a neutral
condition (Han and Lerner, 2006). A separate study tested whether disgust
would eliminate the status quo effect even when the commodities in question
were generic boxes of equal weight and volume containing undisclosed school
supplies — i.e. ludicrous stimuli for forming strong preferences. Even when
from one another, disgust strongly increased decision makers’ choice to trade
away what they had, thus eliminating the status quo effect. In sum, disgust’s
implicit goal to expel prompted disgusted people to trade away their status-
quo commodity in exchange for a new commodity. This result would not have
Feelings and Consumer Decision Making 27
potential possessions. This would lead decision makers to simply retain their
renders both what one has, and what one might acquire, undesirable.
disgust), a target product (in physical contact with the source product), and
two non-target products (not in physical contact with the source product).
The participants’ task was to report how much they would like to try / use
each of the target products they just saw in the shopping cart. Consistent
with the hypothesis, they found that any product which touched the
products that did not touch the disgusting product did not drop in value). In
normative influence of emotion. In sum, the results are consistent with the
Feelings and Consumer Decision Making 28
further demonstrate that the ATF provides a flexible yet specific framework
differences among emotions at a much more specific level than mere valence.
These attributes make the ATF a useful tool for studying the effects
raises questions that warrant further research. First, studies to date have
addressed only the effects of one appraisal dimension or the additive effects of
however, that this could be a rich area for future research. They examined
message framed consistent with the experienced emotion (e.g. sadness & self-
study by Fischhoff and his colleagues (2005) which found that fear and anger
from September 11th affected risk assessment one year later. However, in
this case, the emotions were reactivated a year later. What remains to be
it would take to undo such a stain. Answers to these questions would have
Feelings and Consumer Decision Making 30
CONCLUSION
framework and have offered evidence consistent with the framework. The
complex than one would have predicted based on valence alone. Instead of
sufficiently powerful to alter judgments and choices even when real money is
theories of affect and judgment. For example, it shares with the Mood as
Information Model (Schwarz, 1990; Schwarz & Clore, 1988) and the Affect
Infusion Model (Forgas, 1995) the general assumption that affect powerfully
consumer preferences arise not only from fixed properties of commodities, but
also from the particular choice set in which they appear, as well as the
Bettman, Luce, & Payne, 1998; Payne, Bettman, and Johnson 1993).
subset of choices, such as when one decides which perfume to buy? Or, is it a
wider array of choices ranging from when one decides which health plan to
select to when one decides which car to buy? In our view, the wider set
pervade our thoughts and guide our behaviors, as some philosophers have
emotion research was mostly dormant in the 20th century (for discussion, see
Ekman, 1998; Ekman & Davidson, 1994), it is now a vibrant area, generating
Acknowledgements
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Footnotes
bias judgment and decision making. Integral emotions, for example, are a
can improve certain kinds of decisions – at least, those that are hedonically
2. Changes in risk perception elicited by fear and anger occur not only
showed that angry and happy individuals reported similar levels of optimism
3. Note that a choice price differs from a buying price. A choice price
whether to give up one’s own money to obtain an object. Yet, a choice price is
experimental settings for the following reasons: (a) it does not require
choice that is formerly identical to, but framed differently from, selling; (c) it
holds constant the money side of the equation – both selling and choice
money side of the equation constant ensures that the effects of the emotions
Feelings and Consumer Decision Making 47
are not operating through feelings about gaining or losing money (Kahneman,
Knetsch, & Thaler, 1990; Lerner et al., 2004). Therefore, a choice price is a
endowment effect (e.g. Braga & Starmer, 2005; Lerner et al., 2004;
close cousin of the status quo effect. However, the decision literature
provides evidence that the two should not be equated. By convention, the
Marschak, 1964) whereas the status quo effect is measured by a choice task --
endowment effect.