DOI: Crossref DOI pending · Also available as 10.5281/zenodo.23676661
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@techreport{cezjah2026wp05,
author = {C{\'e}zjah},
title = {The Constructivist Interpretation Theory of Emotion: Where Appraisal Ends and Interpretation Begins},
institution = {New Intellectual LLC},
address = {Miami, FL},
type = {Working paper},
number = {5},
year = {2026},
month = {oct},
url = {https://newintellectual.com/pages/how-to-design-an-emotion-wp-05},
note = {Crossref DOI pending. Also available as https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23676661}
}Abstract
Appraisal theories explain how a subject evaluates what an encounter means for its goals and well-being, but not how the subject constructs a determinate emotion from the feeling that the evaluation leaves open. I present the Constructivist Interpretation Theory of Emotion (CITE), the interpretive thesis of the Constructivist Semiotic Model of Emotions. CITE holds that interpretation, rather than appraisal, constitutes emotional meaning: appraisal, prediction, categorization, and physiological affect constrain emotional possibility, and emotion arises only when an agent commits to one interpretation by binding an emotion concept to a referent under a governing goal and marking the commitment with an identifier. I compare appraisal frameworks and CITE across five structural divergences: where emotional meaning arises, where feeling stands, what role emotion concepts play, what role appraisal plays, and whether interpretive error is possible. Appraisal operates on the situation and succeeds when it gets the situation right; interpretation operates on the feeling and succeeds when its construct meets a concept’s identity conditions under the goal. A worked case, one bear and two emotions, holds appraisal and feeling fixed while the emotion changes with the goal. The strongest claim is that an agent can appraise correctly and still construct the wrong emotion.
Contents
- 1. Introduction: What Appraisal Leaves Open
- 2. The Thesis
- 3. Five Structural Divergences
- 4. One Bear, Two Emotions
- 5. Two Acts, Defined
- 6. Objections and Replies
- 7. What Is Shared and What Is New
- 8. What CITE Keeps
- 9. Scope and Limits
- 10. Conclusion
- Appendix: Code, UML Diagrams, and Input/Output
- References
Relation to the book
This paper restates, in new prose, Appendix L of How to Design an Emotion (Cézjah 2026, app. L). The book is the full treatment.
Record
- Constructivist Interpretation Theory of Emotion
- appraisal theory
- interpretation
- interpretive commitment
- identity conditions
- Component Process Model
- core relational themes
- James–Lange theory
- two-factor theory
- reappraisal
- interpretive error
- construal
- conceptual act theory
- Emotional Constructivism
- Constructivist Semiotics
- Constructivist Semiotic Sign
- Constructivist Semiotic Model of Emotions
- Theory of Constrained Identity
- Emotionese
- Emotional Meaning Architecture
- Constructivist Linguistics of Emotion
- misattribution
- affect, feeling, and emotion
- theory of emotion
- concept theory
- semiotics
- affective science
- philosophy of emotion
- affective neuroscience
- social and affective neuroscience
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