From values to emotions: Cognitive appraisal mediates the impact of core values on emotional experience.

Abstract

Emotions and values are fundamentally connected. They both are psychological markers of subjective relevance and are thought to be deeply functionally intertwined: According to appraisal theories of emotion, emotions arise when value concerns are at stake; according to theories of value, a value that is threatened or supported gets infused with feelings. Surprisingly, while these assumptions are considered well established by researchers in the respective domains, up to now, empirical research has not provided much evidence supporting a link between values and emotions. To fill this gap, here we report results from three experiments demonstrating that values are indeed antecedents of emotions when emotional experiences arise in response to value-relevant stimuli. Individual differences in biospheric values predicted the intensity of emotional responses toward positive and negative information concerning nature and climate change, both when measured via psychophysiology (Experiment 1) and via self-report (Experiments 1-3). Primary appraisal was identified as the key process connecting values and emotions (Experiments 2-3), supporting the notion of appraisal theories that specific mechanisms of relevance detection underlie the elicitation of emotion. These findings may lead to new developments in value and emotion theories, potentially resulting in a stronger integration of the two constructs in a shared theoretical framework.

Doxing, political affiliation, and type of information: Effects on suspicion, perceived similarity, and hiring-related judgments.

“…The emotions literature suggests that situations involving important values can easily give rise to emotional reactions, which subsequently guide behavior. For example, across three experiments, Conte et al (2023) demonstrated that reactions were stronger for negative stimuli than positive stimuli—because negative stimuli aroused negative emotions from individuals. Similar results are found in the neuropsychology literature, suggesting that negative information, as opposed to neutral information, increases both arousal and threat perceptions (Krasowski et al, 2021).…”

Short and long-term dominance of negative information in shaping public energy perceptions: The case of shallow geothermal systems

“…Values can thus be conceptualized as lenses that weight the pertinence of new information and guide their appraisal at onset (Scherer, 2013;Schwartz and Bilsky, 1987). New information appraised as value-relevant directs attention in a noisy environment and elicits stronger emotional reactions than value-irrelevant information (Conte et al, 2022). Biospheric values in particular have been related to more intense emotional responses towards positive and negative information concerning nature and climate change (Conte et al, 2022), and to an individual disposition to experience emotions in an environmental context (Hahnel and Brosch, 2018).…”

“…New information appraised as value-relevant directs attention in a noisy environment and elicits stronger emotional reactions than value-irrelevant information (Conte et al, 2022). Biospheric values in particular have been related to more intense emotional responses towards positive and negative information concerning nature and climate change (Conte et al, 2022), and to an individual disposition to experience emotions in an environmental context (Hahnel and Brosch, 2018). This suggests that biospheric values might enhance the updating of affective associations to energy technologies: in other words, accumulating information about a value-relevant energy technology should lead to more extreme affective reactions.…”

“…Perlaviciute and Steg, 2014), nor were biospheric values related to subjective knowledge or long-term changes in perception of shallow geothermal systems: their role was selective to enhancing the short-term changes induced by information processing. Congruent with appraisal theory (Conte et al, 2022;Scherer, 2013), citizens who bestowed higher importance upon biospheric values updated their affect to a greater extent after each information statement than citizens who consider these values unimportant. Biospheric values also accentuated changes in evaluations of shallow geothermal systems and for the chosen deep geothermal electricity output for the Swiss 2035 energy mix, circumscribed to citizens who received negative information.…”

“…This circumscribed effect of biospheric values on information processing about an unknown technologyshallow geothermal systemssuggests that biospheric values act as lenses through which information is processed (Conte et al, 2022;Schwartz, 1992). When enough information has been accumulated, the relationship between the technology and biospheric values is consolidated, biospheric values can directly color energy perceptionas it is the case for well-known energy sources such as nuclear energy (de Groot et al, 2013;Perlaviciute et al, 2018).…”