Appraisal ratings in diary reports of reasonable and unreasonable anger
Parkinson B., Roper A., Simons G.
Forty-eight undergraduate students completed diaries reporting on up to five episodes of anger experienced over the course of a week. Ratings of motivational relevance, motivational incongruence and other-accountability appraisals were significantly lower for relatively less reasonable instances of anger. Multilevel modelling confirmed that rated reasonableness of anger was a significant continuous predictor of the same three appraisal dimensions, even after controlling for reported anger. These results extend earlier findings obtained using retrospective questionnaires, suggesting that reportable other-blame-related appraisals are generally weaker when anger is perceived as unreasonable. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.