Rainer Reisenzein
Biographic Data
| ID | 148173 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rainer Reisenzein |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rainer |
| FAMILY NAME | Reisenzein |
| SIGNATURE | REISENZEIN R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universität Greifswald |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6091-108X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 52 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 29 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
What does appraisal theory suggest about animal emotions
In my commentary I expand on the theory-based approach to animal emotions by examining what appraisal theories of emotions suggest about them. I argue that if we assume that core appraisal mechanisms of humans - I focus on the appraisals of motive-congruence and unexpectedness - plus the mechanism underlying the generation of adaptive action goals by appraisals, are innate, then we are implicitly committed to assuming a much larger set of innate …
Activation of the culture-transmission motive in immigrants
According to the theory of cultural transmission in minorities (Mchitarjan & Reisenzein, 2014a), sociocultural groups desire to maintain their cultural system and transmit it to the next generation. We report a factorial survey experiment that tested a central assumption of the theory: The culture-transmission motive is activated by perceived threats to cultural transmission and motivates pedagogical actions designed to cope with those threats. Y…
Emotional Feelings
This special section of Emotion Review is devoted to the discussion of a recent philosophical emotion theory, the theory of emotions as affective position-takings (Jean Moritz Müller, The World-Directedness of Emotional Feeling: On Affect and Intentionality, Palgrave MacMillan, 2019). The aims of the special section are to provide readers with a spotlight view of recent research in the philosophy of emotion, to advance emotion theory, and support…
Emotions as Affective Position-Takings and as Nonconceptual Meta-Representations
The theory of emotions as affective position-takings (PT) is investigated from the perspective of a computational model of the belief-desire theory of emotions (CBDTE) proposed by the author. Both theories assume that a core subset of typical emotion episodes are the products of an evaluation process in which cognized states of affairs are evaluated for their congruence with the person's desires; and that emotions are, on the conscious level, fee…
Tasks for a theoretical psychology of emotion
(4), 295. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0055768]. The nine tasks are: (1) Analysis, rational reconstruction and critique of existing emotion theories. (2) Comparison of different theories. (3) Systematization and integration of theories. (4) Reconstruction of the development of theories over time. (5) Analysis, reconstruction and critique of theory-data and data-theory inferences. (6) Analysis, reconstruction and critique of the complete set of argume…
Back to Arnold? Three Problems for the Social Functional Theory of Emotion
On the latency of object recognition and affect
According to the semantic primacy hypothesis of emotion generation, stimuli must be semantically categorized to evoke emotions. This hypothesis was tested in two speeded reaction time experiments that also explored the processes underlying valence judgments. Participants viewed pleasant and unpleasant pictures. In different blocks of trials, they pressed a key as soon as they experienced the feeling evoked by a picture, recognized the depicted ob…
Perceptual latencies of object recognition and affect measured with the rotating spot method
According to the semantic primacy hypothesis of emotion generation, stimuli must be semantically categorized to evoke emotions. This hypothesis was tested in two chronometric studies, using the rotating spot method of timing subjective events. Participants saw pleasant and unpleasant pictures while a spot rotated around the edge of the picture. In different blocks of trials, they indicated when they experienced the pleasant or unpleasant feeling …
Ruth Leys. The Ascent of Affect
On Jon Snow’s death
The death of Jon Snow at the end of the fifth season of the TV serial Game of Thrones prompted an intense reaction among the fans of the serial on social media. Thousands of viewers all over the world contributed to the discussion of the meaning and implications of this event, turning it into a global event in the participatory culture of contemporary seriality. In this article, we propose an explanation of this remarkable cultural phenomenon. Ba…
Evidence for the Context Dependence of the Side-Effect Effect
In four experiments involving 565 German speakers we tested several hypotheses about possible determinants of the side-effect effect ( see ), which consists of judging foreseen bad, but not good, side-effects of actions as intentionally produced. Experiment 1 failed to find intentionality ascriptions for bad side-effects for the majority of the participants in two different scenarios and obtained no consistent support for two hypothesized social-…
Towards a theory of cultural transmission in minorities
We outline a theory of cultural transmission in socio-cultural minorities in a foreign cultural environment. The explanatory focus of the theory is on the educational activities of minorities and on the educational policies of the majority towards them. The theory comprises two components referring to, respectively, the proximate psychological mechanisms and the distal cultural–evolutionary processes that underlie minority– majority interactions.…
Facial expressions in response to a highly surprising event exceeding the field of vision
The Discovery of Common-Sense Psychology
This special issue of Social Psychology commemorates the 50th anniversary of Fritz Heider’s 1958 book The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. The contributions to the special issue address the history and current state of attribution research, or illustrate contemporary research in the field. The historical articles document that Heider’s analysis of causal attribution and of common-sense psychology was significantly influenced by his academic…
The Teacher Who had the Greatest Influence on My Thinking”
According to Heider, some of his ideas about common-sense psychology presented in The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations ( Heider, 1958 ) originally came from his academic teacher, Alexius Meinong. However, Heider makes no reference to Meinong in his book. To clarify Meinong’s influence on Heider, we compare Heider’s explication of common-sense psychology with Meinong’s writings, in particular those on ethics. Our results confirm that Heider’s…
Years of Attribution Research
Emotions and appraisals
In his commentary on M. Siemer and R. Reisenzein (2007), B. Parkinson (2007) raised a number of important questions concerning the process of emotion inference and the scope of appraisal theories. Siemer and Reisenzein first examine the alternative explanations of their findings proposed by Parkinson and then look at the alternative "situated" view of emotions proposed by him. The main conclusion is that the issues raised by Parkinson can be deal…
On the expression and experience of surprise
Three studies examined the effects of experimentally manipulated surprise expressions on the experience of surprise. Surprise was induced by a sudden, unannounced change of the stimulus presentation during a computerized task. Facial expression was manipulated by leading participants to adopt an expression akin to surprise, or by forcing them to look up steeply to a monitor. The expression manipulations had no intensifying effect on the experienc…
The process of emotion inference
Three experiments investigated the process of inferring emotions from brief descriptions of typical eliciting situations, using response time methodology. The initial hypothesis was that emotion inferences are mediated by inferred cognitive appraisals of the eliciting event (concerning e.g., its valence or the responsible agent). This hypothesis was contradicted by the finding of Experiment 1 that emotion judgments are typically made faster than …
What is a definition of emotion? And are emotions mental-behavioral processes
[I argue that a precise definition of emotions is neither necessary nor possible prior to empirical research on emotions. It is not necessary because all that is needed for for fruitful research and successful communication is a working definition of emotions, a description that allows to roughly demarcate the class of emotions. It is not possible because precise emotion definitions are real definitions, empirical claims about the essence of emot…
Evidence for strong dissociation between emotion and facial displays
Eight experiments examined facial expressions of surprise in adults. Surprise was induced by disconfirming a previously established schema or expectancy. Self-reports and behavioral measures indicated the presence of surprise in most participants, but surprise expressions were observed only in 4%-25%, and most displays consisted of eyebrow raising only; the full, 3-component display was never seen. Experimental variations of surprise intensity, s…
Experiencing activation
Experiencing activation
R. E. Thayer (1989) proposed 2 types of activation: energetic arousal (awake-tired) and tense arousal (tense-calm). This view has been challenged by claims that energetic arousal and tense arousal are mixtures of valence and a single activation dimension. The authors present a direct test of this hypothesis by computing the correlation between the residuals of energetic arousal and tense arousal after removing the shared variance with valence. Wh…
Cognitive processes involved in similarity judgments of emotions
This article challenges the prevailing, semantic view of the cognitive processes underlying similarity judgments of emotions, which assumes that these judgments are based on a property comparison process. An alternative view is proposed, according to which judgments of emotion similarity reflect impressions of the degree of co-occurrence of emotions in everyday life. This episodic model of similarity judgments was compared in 2 studies with the m…
Stumpf's cognitive-evaluative theory of emotion
The Schachter theory of emotion
Schachter's cognition-arousal theory of emotion is critically examined from both a conceptual and an empirical point of view. Several of the theory's less clearly defined aspects are clarified, and empirical evidence pertaining to three major deductions from the theory is reviewed. It is concluded that only one of these deductions, claiming that misattributed arousal from an extraneous source intensifies emotional reactions, can be considered ade…
A structural equation analysis of Weiner's attribution—affect model of helping behavior
In this study. Weiner's (1980a. I980b) altributional model of helping behavior, which holds that the effect of causal attributions of another's need on helping is mediated by the affective reactions of sympathy and anger, was analyzed via latent-variable structural modeling techniques. Weiner's model was initially tested in the context of a hypothetical subway emergency situation, and several controversial aspects of the model were clarified thro…
Towards a theory of cultural transmission in minorities
We outline a theory of cultural transmission in socio-cultural minorities in a foreign cultural environment. The explanatory focus of the theory is on the educational activities of minorities and on the educational policies of the majority towards them. The theory comprises two components referring to, respectively, the proximate psychological mechanisms and the distal cultural–evolutionary processes that underlie minority– majority interactions.…
Evidence for strong dissociation between emotion and facial displays
Eight experiments examined facial expressions of surprise in adults. Surprise was induced by disconfirming a previously established schema or expectancy. Self-reports and behavioral measures indicated the presence of surprise in most participants, but surprise expressions were observed only in 4%-25%, and most displays consisted of eyebrow raising only; the full, 3-component display was never seen. Experimental variations of surprise intensity, s…
Cognitive processes involved in similarity judgments of emotions
This article challenges the prevailing, semantic view of the cognitive processes underlying similarity judgments of emotions, which assumes that these judgments are based on a property comparison process. An alternative view is proposed, according to which judgments of emotion similarity reflect impressions of the degree of co-occurrence of emotions in everyday life. This episodic model of similarity judgments was compared in 2 studies with the m…
What does appraisal theory suggest about animal emotions
In my commentary I expand on the theory-based approach to animal emotions by examining what appraisal theories of emotions suggest about them. I argue that if we assume that core appraisal mechanisms of humans - I focus on the appraisals of motive-congruence and unexpectedness - plus the mechanism underlying the generation of adaptive action goals by appraisals, are innate, then we are implicitly committed to assuming a much larger set of innate …
The Discovery of Common-Sense Psychology
This special issue of Social Psychology commemorates the 50th anniversary of Fritz Heider’s 1958 book The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. The contributions to the special issue address the history and current state of attribution research, or illustrate contemporary research in the field. The historical articles document that Heider’s analysis of causal attribution and of common-sense psychology was significantly influenced by his academic…
The Teacher Who had the Greatest Influence on My Thinking”
According to Heider, some of his ideas about common-sense psychology presented in The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations ( Heider, 1958 ) originally came from his academic teacher, Alexius Meinong. However, Heider makes no reference to Meinong in his book. To clarify Meinong’s influence on Heider, we compare Heider’s explication of common-sense psychology with Meinong’s writings, in particular those on ethics. Our results confirm that Heider’s…
The Schachter theory of emotion
Schachter's cognition-arousal theory of emotion is critically examined from both a conceptual and an empirical point of view. Several of the theory's less clearly defined aspects are clarified, and empirical evidence pertaining to three major deductions from the theory is reviewed. It is concluded that only one of these deductions, claiming that misattributed arousal from an extraneous source intensifies emotional reactions, can be considered ade…
A structural equation analysis of Weiner's attribution--affect model of helping behavior
A structural equation analysis of Weiner's attribution—affect model of helping behavior
In this study. Weiner's (1980a. I980b) altributional model of helping behavior, which holds that the effect of causal attributions of another's need on helping is mediated by the affective reactions of sympathy and anger, was analyzed via latent-variable structural modeling techniques. Weiner's model was initially tested in the context of a hypothetical subway emergency situation, and several controversial aspects of the model were clarified thro…
Stumpf's cognitive-evaluative theory of emotion
Stumpf's cognitive-evaluative theory of emotion
As a historical contribution to the current cognition-emotion debate in psychology, this article seeks (a) to bring to the readers' attention the largely ignored tradition of cognitive emotion theory within introspective psychology by reviewing what is probably the most clearly formulated cognitive emotion theory of this period, that proposed by Carl Stumpf, and (b) to point out the relevance of Stumpf's contributions to the psychology of emotion…
Cognitive processes involved in similarity judgments of emotions
This article challenges the prevailing, semantic view of the cognitive processes underlying similarity judgments of emotions, which assumes that these judgments are based on a property comparison process. An alternative view is proposed, according to which judgments of emotion similarity reflect impressions of the degree of co-occurrence of emotions in everyday life. This episodic model of similarity judgments was compared in 2 studies with the m…
Experiencing activation
Experiencing activation
R. E. Thayer (1989) proposed 2 types of activation: energetic arousal (awake-tired) and tense arousal (tense-calm). This view has been challenged by claims that energetic arousal and tense arousal are mixtures of valence and a single activation dimension. The authors present a direct test of this hypothesis by computing the correlation between the residuals of energetic arousal and tense arousal after removing the shared variance with valence. Wh…
Evidence for strong dissociation between emotion and facial displays
Eight experiments examined facial expressions of surprise in adults. Surprise was induced by disconfirming a previously established schema or expectancy. Self-reports and behavioral measures indicated the presence of surprise in most participants, but surprise expressions were observed only in 4%-25%, and most displays consisted of eyebrow raising only; the full, 3-component display was never seen. Experimental variations of surprise intensity, s…
Emotions and appraisals
In his commentary on M. Siemer and R. Reisenzein (2007), B. Parkinson (2007) raised a number of important questions concerning the process of emotion inference and the scope of appraisal theories. Siemer and Reisenzein first examine the alternative explanations of their findings proposed by Parkinson and then look at the alternative "situated" view of emotions proposed by him. The main conclusion is that the issues raised by Parkinson can be deal…
On the expression and experience of surprise
Three studies examined the effects of experimentally manipulated surprise expressions on the experience of surprise. Surprise was induced by a sudden, unannounced change of the stimulus presentation during a computerized task. Facial expression was manipulated by leading participants to adopt an expression akin to surprise, or by forcing them to look up steeply to a monitor. The expression manipulations had no intensifying effect on the experienc…
The process of emotion inference
Three experiments investigated the process of inferring emotions from brief descriptions of typical eliciting situations, using response time methodology. The initial hypothesis was that emotion inferences are mediated by inferred cognitive appraisals of the eliciting event (concerning e.g., its valence or the responsible agent). This hypothesis was contradicted by the finding of Experiment 1 that emotion judgments are typically made faster than …
What is a definition of emotion? And are emotions mental-behavioral processes
[I argue that a precise definition of emotions is neither necessary nor possible prior to empirical research on emotions. It is not necessary because all that is needed for for fruitful research and successful communication is a working definition of emotions, a description that allows to roughly demarcate the class of emotions. It is not possible because precise emotion definitions are real definitions, empirical claims about the essence of emot…
The Discovery of Common-Sense Psychology
This special issue of Social Psychology commemorates the 50th anniversary of Fritz Heider’s 1958 book The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. The contributions to the special issue address the history and current state of attribution research, or illustrate contemporary research in the field. The historical articles document that Heider’s analysis of causal attribution and of common-sense psychology was significantly influenced by his academic…
The Teacher Who had the Greatest Influence on My Thinking”
According to Heider, some of his ideas about common-sense psychology presented in The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations ( Heider, 1958 ) originally came from his academic teacher, Alexius Meinong. However, Heider makes no reference to Meinong in his book. To clarify Meinong’s influence on Heider, we compare Heider’s explication of common-sense psychology with Meinong’s writings, in particular those on ethics. Our results confirm that Heider’s…
Years of Attribution Research
Facial expressions in response to a highly surprising event exceeding the field of vision
Towards a theory of cultural transmission in minorities
We outline a theory of cultural transmission in socio-cultural minorities in a foreign cultural environment. The explanatory focus of the theory is on the educational activities of minorities and on the educational policies of the majority towards them. The theory comprises two components referring to, respectively, the proximate psychological mechanisms and the distal cultural–evolutionary processes that underlie minority– majority interactions.…
Evidence for the Context Dependence of the Side-Effect Effect
In four experiments involving 565 German speakers we tested several hypotheses about possible determinants of the side-effect effect ( see ), which consists of judging foreseen bad, but not good, side-effects of actions as intentionally produced. Experiment 1 failed to find intentionality ascriptions for bad side-effects for the majority of the participants in two different scenarios and obtained no consistent support for two hypothesized social-…
Ruth Leys. The Ascent of Affect
On Jon Snow’s death
The death of Jon Snow at the end of the fifth season of the TV serial Game of Thrones prompted an intense reaction among the fans of the serial on social media. Thousands of viewers all over the world contributed to the discussion of the meaning and implications of this event, turning it into a global event in the participatory culture of contemporary seriality. In this article, we propose an explanation of this remarkable cultural phenomenon. Ba…
Perceptual latencies of object recognition and affect measured with the rotating spot method
According to the semantic primacy hypothesis of emotion generation, stimuli must be semantically categorized to evoke emotions. This hypothesis was tested in two chronometric studies, using the rotating spot method of timing subjective events. Participants saw pleasant and unpleasant pictures while a spot rotated around the edge of the picture. In different blocks of trials, they indicated when they experienced the pleasant or unpleasant feeling …
Emotional Feelings
This special section of Emotion Review is devoted to the discussion of a recent philosophical emotion theory, the theory of emotions as affective position-takings (Jean Moritz Müller, The World-Directedness of Emotional Feeling: On Affect and Intentionality, Palgrave MacMillan, 2019). The aims of the special section are to provide readers with a spotlight view of recent research in the philosophy of emotion, to advance emotion theory, and support…
Emotions as Affective Position-Takings and as Nonconceptual Meta-Representations
The theory of emotions as affective position-takings (PT) is investigated from the perspective of a computational model of the belief-desire theory of emotions (CBDTE) proposed by the author. Both theories assume that a core subset of typical emotion episodes are the products of an evaluation process in which cognized states of affairs are evaluated for their congruence with the person's desires; and that emotions are, on the conscious level, fee…
Tasks for a theoretical psychology of emotion
(4), 295. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0055768]. The nine tasks are: (1) Analysis, rational reconstruction and critique of existing emotion theories. (2) Comparison of different theories. (3) Systematization and integration of theories. (4) Reconstruction of the development of theories over time. (5) Analysis, reconstruction and critique of theory-data and data-theory inferences. (6) Analysis, reconstruction and critique of the complete set of argume…
Psychology (26 works) · Social Psychology (23 works) · Cognitive psychology (19 works) · Emotions and Moral Behavior (18 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (10 works) · Communication (8 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Cognition (7 works)