My Perceptions are not your Perceptions: The Mediating Role of Cognitive Appraisal on the Association between the Big Five Personality Traits and Emotional Reactivity

Personality, the enduring pattern of affect, behaviors, cognitions, and desires, strongly predicts important outcomes, such as mental and physical health, and specific emotional reactions. However, the reasons behind these associations are still unclear, and explanatory processes are now being searched for. Appraisal theories of emotion, particularly the Component Process Model of emotion, can help to address this gap. In this model, an <i>appraisal</i> <i>process</i><i>,</i> a situational cognitive evaluation, influences emotion unfolding by activating concomitant experiential, expressive, motivational and physiological responses. While evidence on the personality-appraisal relationship exists, specific knowledge about the potential mediatory role of appraisal in this relationship is very sparse, although it could explain how personality might shape emotional reactions. In a survey, we evaluated the personality of 500 participants (<i>M</i>_Age = 22.41; Females = 83.2%) and confronted them with two emotional scenarios of different valences. Leveraging exploratory mediation analysis (EMA), we found that, in the Negative Scenario, the appraisals of negative consequences, powerlessness, and future consequences adjustment emerged as the most influential mediators, being differentially implicated in the relationship between Neuroticism, on the one hand, and the Feeling and Autonomic Arousal components, on the other hand. Mediation pathways in the Positive Scenario were more diverse, with the appraisal of powerlessness again emerging as a relevant mediator in the relationship between traits and emotional outcomes. This study highlights appraisal as a fundamental explanatory mechanism linking individual differences to emotional responses. Appraisal could be thus leveraged in interventions to allow certain personality to take the path of specific, healthier affective outcomes.