The Role of Cognitive Appraisals in Emotional Blunting - Projects at ...

12 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin XX(X)confidence regarding a causal role. Study 3 therefore experimentallyprimes agency. It also examines the carryover ofemotional blunting to cognitions via punitive attributions. Ifemotional blunting reduces the subsequent elicitation ofanger because of conflicting situational agency appraisals,participants primed with situational agency should experienceless anger and be less punitive than those primed withhuman agency (Lerner et al., 1998).MethodParticipants and procedure. Participants were 109 undergraduates(65 males, 42 females) [AQ: 1] who receivedcourse credit for participation. The “two-study” procedure(i.e., memory study and imagination study) was used to dissociatethe appraisal priming task from the emotion induction.This study was a one-factor between-subjects designwith two levels: human agency or situational agency.The procedure is illustrated in detail in Figure 2. First, participantscompleted the appraisal prime (see Table 4), 9 followedby agency appraisal measures used in Study 2. Next,all participants viewed the video clip and responded to theemotion list and punitive attributions. The three anger measureswere of primary interest and were averaged into a compositescore (angry, irritated, and mad; α .89). For thepunitive attributions, participants read two short vignettes,which were counterbalanced (see Lerner et al., 1998), andcompleted five items assessing punitiveness toward the mainactor in each vignette (1 not at all to 7 very much so). Thefive items across the two vignettes were collapsed to producea punitiveness score (α .87). Each vignette described harmresulting from negligence by a worker.Results and DiscussionManipulation check. We expected participants’ agencyappraisals to differ depending on their appraisal prime condition.Indeed, situational-agency condition participantsreported significantly more situational control for events thandid human-agency condition participants (Ms 4.99 vs.1.88), t 12.85, p .01. In contrast, human-agency conditionparticipants reported significantly more individual control forevents than did situational-agency condition participants(Ms 6.11 vs. 2.93), t 13.42, p .01. Though not measuredin the main study, we conducted a posttest to examine theextent to which the agency appraisal primes elicited angerand sadness. 10Inferential analysis: Blunting anger. We hypothesized thatagency appraisal primes would influence the extent to whichsubsequent anger was elicited by the anger-eliciting film clip.We tested the simple main effects of agency appraisal conditionon self-reported, composite anger score. As expected,situational-agency condition participants reported experiencinglower levels of subsequent anger in response to the angerTable 4. Agency Appraisal Priming Sentences (Study 3)Human agency appraisals1 You don’t get to see a favoritegroup perform because thelead singer decided to cancelthe show at the last-minute.2 All the food in yourrefrigerator spoils becauseyour roommate didn’t shutthe refrigerator door tight.3 Your outdoor volleyball gameis ruined because playersfrom the previous teambroke the net.4 A fire damaged yourapartment because yourroommate left a candleburning.5 Your landlord raises yourrent because he wantedto increase profits to buildanother apartment complex.6 You break your leg while skiingwhen another skier cutsyou off.7 You lose most of your moneywhen someone robs yourapartment, stealing yourwallet, checkbook, and creditcards.8 You don’t get a promotionat work because yourcolleague stole your ideaand told your boss it wastheir idea.9 A friend dies in a plane crashbecause the pilot wasintoxicated and crashed theplane.10 Your high-risk surgery wasnot a success because thedoctor removed the wrongkidney.Situational agency appraisalsYou don’t get to see afavorite group performbecause their concertwas cancelled when theirinternational flight wasdelayed.All the food in yourrefrigerator spoilsbecause the electricitywas off for hours.Your outdoor volleyballgame is ruined when anunexpected thunderstormcauses heavy rains.A fire damaged yourapartment becauselightning struck theoutside of the apartmentcomplex.Rising property taxes causeyour rent to be increased.While skiing, icy slopescaused you to break yourleg.You lose most of yourmoney when the stockmarket falls due to aslowing economy.You don’t get a promotionat work because firmdownsizing causes theposition to be eliminated.A friend dies in a planecrash when the cabindepressurizes and theplane goes down.Your high-risk surgery wasnot a success because thecancer that was supposedto be removed has spreadto inoperable areas.Participants were asked to type and rehearse 10 sentences with the goalof memorizing them. The sentences depicted negative events, which wereadapted from Keltner, Ellsworth, and Edwards (1993).treatment (M 4.60) than did human-agency condition participants(M 5.57), t 2.39, p .05, d .46. These resultsindicated that for participants primed with situational-agencyappraisals, their subsequent experience of anger, characterizedby contrasting human agency appraisals, was blunted.See Figure 5 for all emotion self-reports by agency appraisalprime.