Chapter 6 - Reactions to Events: II

Summary

Prospect-based emotions are introduced as a subset of Event-based emotions, with the key ones being emotion types that arise from envisaging positive events, referred to as “Hope” emotions, or negative events, referred to as “Fear” emotions. The envisagement of such events is discussed as sometimes being confirmed, resulting in “Gratification” and “Fears-confirmed” emotions, and sometimes being disconfirmed, resulting in “Relief” and “Disappointment” emotions. A characterization of each of these emotion types is presented in terms of the valence of the feeling and the associated emergence condition, of which the disconfirmation of an envisaged undesirable event is a typical example. The local variables that influence the intensity of the Prospect-based emotions are discussed in detail. The chapter also discusses how the model can accommodate the fact that, although Prospect-based emotions are usually future oriented, they can also concern past events, with the phenomenon of a person experiencing relief upon learning that a plane they missed subsequently crashed serving as one illustrative example.