...States

Preparation of this article was supported in part by Andersen Consulting through Northwestern University's Institute for the Learning Sciences.

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...work.

In some cases we wished to incorporate affective phenomena not specifically addressed in these works (e.g., ``valence bias'') and have therefore created computable formalisms for these phenomena based on relevant psychological literature. We do not claim that our formalisms for these phenomena reflect actual cognitive processes at a low level.

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...calculate.

For example, for a person to be surprised when a jet airplane crashes into their building they must know that this is something that does not normally occur. By contrast, a person is not surprised when the phone rings in their office, because this is something that does normally occur. This is a true default reasoning problem because though one event is surprising and the other is not, the person need not have active expectations regarding planes or telephones (see also [Ortony and Partridge1987]). We have included these difficult-to-calculate variables because they are important theoretically, and because in some simulation paradigms we have a pragmatic way of making such values available to the affective reasoning machinery.

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...continuum.

The continuum for this variable, and the next three, must be measured along the correct dimension. This is not always a straightforward problem. For example, in the Biblical story of the two harlots that are both claiming to be the mother of a newborn (Kings 1:3), Solomon threatens to divide the child in half and give a piece to each of the women who claim him. The real mother desires first that she get full possession of the child, second that she have possession of no part of him, and least of all that she have half of him.

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...was.

A more straightforward example would be, ``how fresh the flowers were.'' This example was chosen because it illustrates the concept that the judgment of appealingness, and so forth, is internal to the agent, while the degree of that appealingness may be set by an external, albeit difficult to measure, value.

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...1.

It is not clear what the relationship between this variable and the friendship-animosity variable should be. We have created this as a distinct variable to handle such instances as animosities that arise in the course of family life, and so forth. To wit: if a family member cheats you of your inheritance it may be a much more intense experience than if ``the government'' does, regardless of whether the relationship to that family member is one of friendship or animosity.

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...anxiety.

We treat depression and anxiety as mood-biasing phenomena rather than as moods themselves, in keeping with much cognitive psychology research (e.g., [Beck1967]).

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...needed.

Even the notion of emotional intensity itself is underspecified since a full treatment would have to account for such parameters as the amplitudes of multiple intensity peaks, their durations, and so forth. (c.f., [Frijda et al. 1992]).

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