2009/01/14 by Shlomo Hareli, Ursula Heß · 1 citation
Psychology · #Emotions and Moral Behavior #Personality Traits and Psychology #Cultural Differences and Values
paper · doi:10.1080/02699930802613828
openalex publication_date 2009/01/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The present research aimed to assess how people use knowledge about the emotional reactions of others to make inferences about their character. Specifically, we postulate that people can reconstruct or “reverse engineer” the appraisals underlying an emotional reaction and use this appraisal information to draw person perception inferences. As predicted, a person who reacted with anger to blame was perceived as more aggressive, and self-confident, but also as less warm and gentle than a person who reacted with sadness (Study 1). A person who reacted with a smile (Study 1) or remained neutral (Study 2) was perceived as self-confident but also as unemotional. These perceptions were mediated by perceived appraisals.