0.5 How do emotion, attention, thought, and arousal work together  (Page 16/17)

So, everything has a different meaning for each person. That also means that each thing in life is going to evoke unique emotions in each person. Everyone is different, everyone experiences emotions differently, but on the other hand, people are also general and ordinary (and are going to experience similar emotions in similar circumstances).

A further assumption is that appraisal occurs continuously. That is, a number of appraisal theorists have proposed that humans constantly engage in a meaning analysis in which the adaptational significance of their relationship to the environment is appraised, with the goal being to avoid, minimize, or alleviate an appraised actual or potential harm, or to seek, maximize, or maintain an appraised actual or potential benefit. The reason for proposing that appraisal occurs continuously is that the emotion system is seen as an important motivational system that has evolved to alert the individual when he or she is confronted to adaptationally relevant circumstances. In order to serve this alerting function, the emotion-elicitation mechanism must be constantly "on guard" in order to be able to signal such circumstances when they arise. It is important to note that in making this assumption, appraisal theorists do not assert that the appraisal process need be conscious or deliberate; instead, they have consistently maintained that appraisal can occur automatically and outside of awareness. The importance and implications of this latter assumption is considered in more detail when I discuss process models of appraisal.

So, basically, there is something in people that is constantly searching and alerting people for significant emotional events. I don't know how to explain the complexity of the appraisal process that someone goes through in order to respond to emotions. People experience emotion constantly, there must be extremely complicated evaluations going on all of the time - you are constantly deeply thinking about the significance of what is going around you and how that is impacting your own emotions.

A final major assumption is that the emotion system is highly organized and differentiated. Appraisal theorists recognize that the same basic approach/avoid dichotomy associated with drives and reflexes and subscribed to by theorists endorsing two-dimensional conceptions of emotion, such as positive and negative affect, is fundamental to emotion. However, appraisal theorists describe emotion as being far more differentiated than a simple view of this dichotomy would allow. They argue that there are different major types of harm and benefit, and that these different types have different implications for how one might best contend with them. This is especially true for actual and potential harms, in which, depending on the circumstances, the most adaptive course might be to avoid the harmful situation, but could also range from active attach of the agent causing the harmful circumstances to reprimanding oneself if one caused the circumstances, to accepting and enduring the harmful circumstances if they cannot be avoided or repaired. Building on Arnold's definition of emotion mentioned previously, contemporary appraisal theorists tend to conceptualize different emotions as different modes of action readiness, each of which is a response to a particular type of adaptationally relevant situation ,and each of which physically and motivationally prepares and pushes the individual to contend with those circumstances in a certain way (e.g., at attack in anger, to avoid or flee in fear, to accept and heal in sadness). Within this differentiated system, the fundamental role of appraisal, again, is to call forth the appropriate emotion(s) when the individual in confronted with personally adaptationally relevant circumstances.