Year: 2026
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Understanding emotion responses relies on reconstructing how individuals appraise events.While prior work has studied emotion trajectories and inherent correlations with appraisals, it has considered appraisals only in a snapshot analysis.However, because appraisal is a complex, sequential process, we argue that it should be analyzed based on how it unfolds throughout a narrative.In this study, we investigate whether trajectories of appraisals are distinctive for different emotions in five-event stories -narratives where each of five sentences describes an event.We employ zero-shot prompting with a large language model to predict appraisals on sub-sequences of a narrative.We find that this approach is effective in identifying relevant appraisals in narratives, without prior knowledge of the evoked emotion, enabling a comprehensive analysis of appraisal trajectories.Furthermore, we are the first to quantitatively identify typical patterns of appraisal trajectories that distinguish emotions.For example, a rising trajectory for self-responsibility indicates trust, while a falling trajectory suggests anger.
Authors: Johannes Schäfer, Janne Wagner, Roman Klinger
Institution: University of Bamberg
Language: English
Topic: Emotion and Mood Recognition
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
OpenAlex ID: W7140101901