The Affective and Intuitive Forms of Trust: The Confidence We Inspire - Trust Theory: A Socio-Cognitive and Computational Model - page 131

Aristotele's
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Belief
(evaluation)

Emotion
(appraisal)

Spinoza's
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Figure 5.1 From Evaluation to Appraisal and vice-versa

5.4 Appraisal
We assume that a positive or negative emotional response can be associated with some stimulus.
The automatic activation of this associated internal response (in Damasio's terms, a 'somatic
marker'; (Damasio, 1994)) is the 'appraisal' of the stimulus postulated by several theories
of emotions (Arnold, 1960), (Frijda, 1986), (Frijda, 1988), (Lazarus et al. , 1970) (Ortony,
1990). The associated negative or positive affective response makes the situation bad or good,
unpleasant or pleasant, and we dislike or we like it.
' Appraisal' consists of an automatic association (conscious or unconscious) of an internal
affective response/state either pleasant or unpleasant, either attractive or repulsive, etc., to
the appraised stimulus or representation.
It does not consist of a judgment of appropriateness or capability - possibly supported by
additional justifications; on the contrary, it just consists of a subjective positive or negative
experience/feeling associated with the stimulus or with the mental representation, usually
previously conditioned to it in similar circumstances, and now retrieved.
This gives us a completely different 'philosophy' of valence and value: now the 'motto' is
the other way around - in Spinoza's spirit - (see Figure 5.1)

'It is good/beautiful what we like/what is pleasant'

As a cognitive evaluation of m is likely to give rise to some goal : if the evaluator X believes
something m to be a means for X 's goal g , X comes to have the goal 'of acquiring and using
the means m ' (we call q this instrumental goal); also the emotional appraisal of m gives rise
to a goal : it activates a very general goal linked to the emotional reaction. This is the cognitive
aspect of emotional appraisal. Positive appraisal activates an 'approach goal' ('to be close to m ;
to have m '), while negative appraisal activates a generic avoidance goal ('not to be close to m ;
to avoid m '). We consider these sub-symbolic, implicit forms of 'evaluation' as evolutionary
and developmental forerunners of cognitive evaluations . Thus we believe the answer to the
question 'do emotions imply evaluations?' depends on the level of analysis addressed.
In sum, in our view:

(1) Appraisal is an associated, conditioned somatic response that has a central component
and involves pleasure/displeasure, attraction/repulsion. Here attraction/repulsion is not a