Are the sources of interest the same for everyone? Using multilevel mixture models to explore individual differences in appraisal structures

By Paul J Silvia, Robert Henson, Jonathan Templin. 2009

92 citations recorded by the source corpus.

How does personality influence the relationship between appraisals and emotions? Recent research suggests individual differences in appraisal structures: people may differ in an emotion's appraisal pattern. We explored individual differences in interest's appraisal structure, assessed as the within-person covariance of appraisals with interest. People viewed images of abstract visual art and provided ratings of interest and of interest's appraisals (novelty–complexity and coping potential) for each picture. A multilevel mixture model found two between-person classes that reflected distinct within-person appraisal styles. For people in the larger class (68%), the novelty–complexity appraisal had a stronger effect on interest; for people in the smaller class (32%), the coping potential appraisal had a stronger effect. People in the larger class were significantly higher in appetitive traits related to novelty seeking (e.g., sensation seeking, openness to experience, and trait curiosity), suggesting that the appraisal classes have substantive meaning. We conclude by discussing the value of within-person mixture models for the study of personality and appraisal.

Subfields: Marketing, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/21af5932cc727d57867bb3629259039196a094ae

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Citations in the corpus

A Case for Domain-Specific Curiosity in Mathematics (2019, background): “For more curious individuals (i.e., high trait curiosity), relative to less curious individuals, appraisals of complexity have been shown to be more important than perceived competence in predicting feelings of interest (Silvia et al. 2009).”
Homo Curious: Curious or Interested? (2019, background): “Such confusion may have been exacerbated by quantitative measurements of both curiosity and situational interest (Kashdan and Silvia 2009; Alexander and Grossnickle 2016) (see Table 2 in Appendix).”
Putting appraisal in context: Toward a relational model of appraisal and emotion (2009, background): “( 2003 , 2007 ) for anger, and Silvia, Henson, and Templin ( 2009 this issue) for interest, have suggested that there may be multiple distinct appraisal patterns associated with the experience of certain emotions, and that individuals may differ in the specific patterns that elicit those emotions ”
Disentangling Curiosity: Dimensionality, Definitions, and Distinctions from Interest in Educational Contexts (2014, background): “…to the study by Boscolo et al. (2011), the set of empirical studies using Silvia ’ s appraisal model of interest (Connelly 2011; Silvia 2005, 2008; Silvia et al. 2009) included in this review are the only additional studies to date that have empirically examined the relation between curiosity…”
Interesting things and curious people: Exploration and engagement as transient states and enduring strengths. (2009, methodology): “In a recent study, we used multilevel mixture analyses to see if there are kinds of within-person appraisal structures ( Silvia, Henson, & Templin, in press ).”
An appraisal account of individual differences in emotional experience (2010, background): “Research has started to identify the personality and emotion dispositions that are associated with the strength or pattern with which appraisals relate to specific emotional experiences (Kuppens et al., 2007, 2008; Silvia et al., 2009; Tong, 2010a).”
Is creativity domain-specific? Latent class models of creative accomplishments and creative self-descriptions. (2009, unknown): “Interested readers can consult recent papers for more information (e.g., Silvia, Henson, & Templin, in press; Wang, Brown, & Bandeen-Roche, 2005); uninterested readers can view this analysis as essentially like a one-way ANOVA for our three between-person groups.”