Formalizing Cognitive Appraisal : From Theory to Computation

Cognitive appraisal theory has been used extensively as basis for computational models. Evaluating these models in an objective way is a difficult issue. Further, integration and comparison between appraisal theories is needed in order to advance the development of appraisal theory. In this paper we argue that a good solution is to formally specify structural appraisal theories using a common formalism. Applying such a formalism results in an objective representation of the structural appraisal theory. We provide evidence for the claims that such a representation (1) can be used to evaluate the computational model, and (2) helps to advance the development of appraisal theory as it can provide a well-structured representation of the theory that can be used to compare and merge theories, as well as make theoretical predictions explicit.