Appraisal can refer to internal verbal monologue, higher-order perceptual processes, memory and attention. Appraisal can be conscious or non-conscious, simple or elaborate, instantaneous or prolonged.

In fact, the only thing that seems to make an appraisal an appraisal is the end result: some sort of personal meaning has been assigned to a stimulus. One would be hard-pressed to think of any cognitive process that does not lead to this result. Indeed, emotions themselves effectively assign meaning to stimuli, which leads to the odd challenge of disambiguating appraisals from the emotions they are purported to generate. So, what is the usefulness of the appraisal construct?

In forming a theoretical construct, does the end justify the means?

If our goal is to form an accurate representation of reality, of what cognitive processes generate emotion and precisely how they do it, we must look at the underlying mechanisms independent of their common ends. Because appraisal is defined according to a common end, it makes little sense to pursue the question, what is appraisal? Instead, we might ask:

What are the various cognitive pathways from stimulus to emotion? What are the higher-order vs. lower-order cognitive precursors? How do we assign meaning to the environment? What is meaning? What are concepts? How do concepts generate emotion?
In what way do higher-order cognitive processes (e.g., reasoning) incorporate lower-order processes (e.g., memory), and how does this influence our theoretical model of emotion? If higher-order processes can be broken down into lower-order processes, what is the usefulness of focusing on higher-order processes?

Perhaps then, empirical support for appraisal theory would be within reach.

From: Lisa Lindeman, ThinkEmotion.com