Glossary

Cognitive appraisal

Γνωστική αποτίμηση

The evaluation you make of what a situation means for you and of what you have to meet it with, which is what produces the state you then feel. Read this way, a feeling is a report about an evaluation, so the useful question is what exactly it evaluated and when.

Also known asappraisal theory, primary and secondary appraisal
Named byRichard Lazarus & Susan Folkman (1984)
Belongs to the skillEmotional Intelligence
Level3

How to spot it

When the bad feeling arrives, ask which week it started in: an appraisal has a date, a mood does not.

The research behind the term

The term is not our invention. It comes from published research, and what follows is what that research found — our own synthesis of the published abstract, not a translation of the original.

Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, Appraisal, and Copingπηγή

Lazarus and Folkman present one of the most important theories of stress management. They argue that stress depends on how the individual appraises a situation and on the coping strategies they use. The theory is widely applied in health psychology and in education.

Practised in

The term does not stay a definition. It appears inside missions where the pattern happens in real time and you have to recognise it as it happens to you.

  • The Message With No Subject

    Level 1
  • The Yes That Sits Badly

    Level 3

Sources

Every claim on this page maps to published research. The citations link to the original source.

  1. Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, Appraisal, and Coping — Source on search.worldcat.org