Craig A Smith

Peabody College of Vanderbilt University · Department of Psychology and Human Development

Appraisal theory assumes that the individual variability of emotional reactions to the same situation is due to individual differences in appraisal. However, the question of how interindividual differences in appraisal come about has been rarely formally addressed. We focus on one of the central dimensions of appraisal—problem-focused coping potent...

Chronic abdominal pain (CAP) represents a common pediatric primary pain disorder that can have long-term effects on physical and mental health into adulthood. Pediatric CAP and Control cohorts recruited in childhood (∼11 years old, T1) and then assessed in emerging adulthood (∼20 years old, T2) were evaluated again for health outcomes in early adul...

Objective: Neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) is linked to self-reported pain severity and disability but its association with evoked pain responsiveness in individuals with chronic pain remains unclear. The present study examined relations between neighborhood SES, assessed through the area deprivation index (ADI), and static and dynamic pai...

COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on people worldwide. We conducted an international survey (n = 3646) examining the degree to which people's appraisals and coping activities around the pandemic predicted their health and well-being. We obtained subsamples from 12 countries—Bangladesh, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, India, Israel, the Netherlands,...

COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on people worldwide. We conducted an international survey (n = 3646) examining the degree to which people's appraisals and coping activities around the pandemic predicted their health and well-being. We obtained subsamples from 12 countries—Bangladesh, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, India, Israel, the Netherlands,...

Objectives: Youth with functional abdominal pain (FAP) experience significant pain-related distress and functional impairment. Although quantitative sensory testing protocols have identified alterations in pain modulatory systems that distinguish youth with FAP from healthy controls, the extent to which evoked pain responses predict subsequent tra...

Inconsistent results of psychological treatments for pediatric functional abdominal pain (FAP) may be due to heterogeneity of patients’ pain-related psychological characteristics. This randomized controlled trial tested whether statistically derived patient subgroups (high pain dysfunctional [HPD], high pain adaptive [HPA], and low pain adaptive [L...

Objectives: Prior work in a cohort of youth with functional abdominal pain (FAP) identified patient subgroups (High Pain Dysfunctional, High Pain Adaptive, Low Pain Adaptive) that predicted differences in the course of FAP from childhood into young adulthood. We aimed to replicate these subgroups in a new sample of adolescents with FAP using the o...

Objective: Stigma is associated with many health conditions, including chronic pain. Research on health-related stigma is limited by the lack of validated instruments that distinguish among various stigma-related constructs. We aimed to develop and validate such a measure for pediatric functional abdominal pain (FAP). Felt stigma (FS) was defined...

We used a retrospective survey (N = 346) to model the patterns of appraisal, motivation, and coping that uniquely correspond with 12 positive emotions (affection/love, amusement, awe, challenge/determination, compassion, gratitude, happiness/joy, hope, interest, pride, relief, and serenity/tranquillity). Generally, we conceptually replicated previo...

The literatures on emotion, stress, and coping have yet to merge and foster an understanding of adaptation, from cognitive appraisal to emotion to coping. Here we examined relationships between these constructs across a college semester. In Study 1, we surveyed 89 students on their appraisals and emotions before and after exams in an introductory c...

Background In healthy individuals, elevated resting blood pressure (BP) is associated with reduced pain responsiveness and lower temporal summation. Prior work indicates that this BP-related hypoalgesia is reduced in individuals with chronic pain. Purpose This study evaluated whether resolution of chronic pain was associated with greater BP-relate...

Having a parent with chronic pain (CP) may confer greater risk for persistence of CP from childhood into young adulthood. Social learning, such as parental modeling and reinforcement, represents one plausible mechanism for the transmission of risk for CP from parents to offspring. Based on a 7-day pain diary in 154 pediatric patients with functiona...

Considerable research links chronic pain to autonomic nervous system (ANS) dysfunction, specifically low heart rate variability (HRV) mediated by reduced parasympathetic activity. However, little is known about factors that influence ANS function in chronic pain. The ANS is the primary pathway for brain-gut communication, making it of particular in...

Unlabelled: Cognitive appraisals inform and shape individuals' pain experiences. As researchers examine mechanisms of cognitive-behavioral interventions for chronic pain, psychometrically sound measures based in cognitive theory are needed to directly assess pain beliefs. The Pain Beliefs Questionnaire (PBQ), a 32-item self-report measure informed...

tracing the emotional response from appraisal to coping ... need to get abstract from Jennifer

Poster at the annual meeting of the Society for Affective Science.

Poster at the biannual world congress of the International Positive Psychology Association.

Objective Evaluate the psychometric properties of child- and parent-report versions of the four-item Abdominal Pain Index (API) in children with functional abdominal pain (FAP) and healthy controls, using a revised scoring method that facilitates comparisons of scores across samples and time. Methods Pediatric patients aged 8–18 years with FAP and...

Background: Cross-sectional studies link functional abdominal pain (FAP) to anxiety and depression in childhood, but no prospective study has evaluated psychiatric status in adulthood or its relation to pain persistence. Methods: Pediatric patients with FAP (n = 332) and control subjects (n = 147) were tracked prospectively and evaluated for psy...

Poster at the annual convention for the Association for Psychological Science.

Poster at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

Objective: To evaluate effects of mothers' and fathers' chronic pain on health outcomes in adult sons and daughters with a childhood history of functional abdominal pain (FAP). Method: Adults (n = 319; Mean age = 22.09 years) with a childhood history of FAP reported parental history of chronic pain and their own current health (chronic pain, som...

Although pediatric functional abdominal pain (FAP) has been linked to abdominal pain later in life, childhood predictors of long-term outcomes have not been identified. This study evaluated whether distinct FAP profiles based on patterns of pain and adaptation in childhood could be identified and whether these profiles predicted differences in clin...

In the 25 years since its foundation, Cognition and Emotion has become a leading psychological journal of research on emotion. Here we review some of the ways in which this has occurred. Questions have included how parallel systems of cognition and emotion can operate in emotion regulation and psychological therapies (including the issue of free wi...

This study investigated attentional biases for pain and social threat versus neutral stimuli in 54 youth with functional abdominal pain (FAP) and 53 healthy control subjects (ages 10 to 16 years). We assessed attentional bias using a visual probe detection task (PDT) that presented pain and social threat words in comparison to neutral words at cons...

There is a puzzling bifurcation in the scientific literatures concerned with psychological stress, coping, and emotion. Robust, but largely separate, literatures have developed to focus on appraisal, stress, coping, and adaptation, on the one hand, and on appraisal and emotion, on the other. Although the topics touched upon in these literatures are...

To evaluate the relation between dispositional and episode-specific pain coping measures, the variability of episode-specific pain coping over time, and the utility of dispositional versus episode-specific measures of pain coping in predicting outcomes in pediatric patients with chronic abdominal pain (CAP). Participants (N = 116) completed a clini...

Elevated resting blood pressure (BP) is hypoalgesic in healthy individuals, but this effect is absent in adults with chronic somatic pain. This study tested whether BP-related hypoalgesia is similarly altered in individuals with a history of chronic visceral pain in childhood. Resting BP was assessed in 94 adolescents and young adults with a known...

According to appraisal theory, emotions result from an individual's meaning analysis of the implications of his/her circumstances for personal well-being, and individual differences in emotion arise when individuals appraise similar situations differently. Relational models of appraisal attempt to describe the situational and dispositional antecede...

To compare autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity and somatic symptoms in chronic abdominal pain (CAP) patients and well children during (a) resting baseline, (b) training in a cognitive task, and (c) random assignment to success vs. failure on the task. The ECG was continuously recorded with a dual lead system (Biopac) in 45 CAP patients and 22 w...

This study examined the effects of diagnosis (functional versus organic), physician practice orientation (biomedical versus biopsychosocial), and maternal trait anxiety (high versus low) on mothers' responses to a child's medical evaluation for chronic abdominal pain. Mothers selected for high (n=80) and low (n=80) trait anxiety imagined that they...

The present study examined a relational model of appraisal that specifies the situational and dispositional antecedents of appraised problem-focused coping potential, itself a hypothesised antecedent of the emotions of hope/challenge and resignation. The hypothesised relational antecedents of this appraisal were tested in a quasi-experiment in whic...

This study aimed to identify clinically meaningful profiles of pain coping strategies used by youth with chronic abdominal pain (CAP). Participants (n=699) were pediatric patients (ages 8-18 years) and their parents. Patients completed the Pain Response Inventory (PRI) and measures of somatic and depressive symptoms, disability, pain severity and p...

To test the hypothesis that pain patients differ from well children in their appraisal and coping with daily stressors and to test a model of the relation of stress appraisal and coping to symptoms and disability. Pediatric patients with chronic abdominal pain (n = 143) and well children (n = 104) completed a 5-day diary study regarding their appra...

Assessed the convergent and discriminant validity of a water load symptom provocation test (WL-SPT) in creating visceral sensations similar to the naturally occurring sensations experienced by children with functional abdominal pain. Participants were pediatric patients with functional abdominal pain (N = 110) and healthy school children (N = 120)...

The objective of this study was to assess the impact of parent attention and distraction on symptom complaints by children with and without chronic functional abdominal pain. The water load symptom provocation task was used to induce visceral discomfort in pediatric patients with abdominal pain (N=104) and well children (N=119), ages 8-16 years. Pa...

This prospective study of children with recurrent abdominal pain (N=133; ages 8--15 years) used path analysis to examine relations among dispositional pain beliefs and coping styles, cognitions and behavior related to a specific pain episode, and short- and long-term outcomes. Children believing they could not reduce or accept pain appraised their...

L. Berkowitz and E. Harmon-Jones (2004) challenge appraisal theories of emotion by describing 2 sets of conditions (physical discomfort and anger-related muscle actions) in which anger appears to be elicited in the absence of theoretically predicted appraisals. In response, the authors discuss the ability of the specific appraisal model they have d...

A novel affect-sensitive human-robot cooperative framework is presented in this paper. Peripheral physiological indices are measured through wearable biofeedback sensors to detect the affective state of the human. Affect recognition is performed through both quantitative and qualitative analyses. A subsumption control architecture sensitive to the...

Appraisal theory, a functional approach to understanding emotion elicitation is described. Three distinct classes of appraisal models are reviewed: structural - which describe the cognitive contents of appraisal and how those contents map onto the elicitation of various distinct emotions; procedural - which describe the cognitive processes underlyi...

IntroductionBroad Dimensions versus Narrow StrategiesAssessing Strategies versus FunctionsSpecificity Imbalance in Current Inventories vis-à-vis Emotion- versus Problem-focused StrategiesAssessment of Dispositional versus Situated CopingSome Representative Findings Using a Multidimensional Coping InventoryNeed for More Sophisticated Analytic Strate...

A novel implicit communication framework in human-machine interaction that is sensitive to human affective states is presented in this paper. The focus is to achieve detection and recognition of human affect based on physiological signals. This involves building an affect recognition system that accepts as input various physiological parameters and...

A novel affect-sensitive human-robot cooperative framework is presented in this paper. Peripheral physiological indices are measured through wearable biofeedback sensors to detect the affective states of the human. Affect recognition is performed through both quantitative and qualitative analyses. A subsumption control architecture that is sensitiv...

To examine the influence of cognitive appraisals on anticipatory anxiety, procedural distress, and postprocedural evaluations in 100 children (ages 8-17) undergoing esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD). Children's knowledge about the procedure, appraisals of the procedure's aversiveness, coping ability, and state anxiety prior to the procedure were ass...

The major assumptions of the appraisal approach to emotion, and progress in the development of two classes of models of emotion that embody this approach, are reviewed. The first class of model is structural and describes the relations between components of appraisal and components of the emotional response, such as subjective feeling state, facial...

Considerable debate has occurred concerning the utility of different methods of obtaining joint counts and their usefulness in predicting outcomes in persons with rheumatoid arthritis. The purpose of this study was to compare two methods of assessing disease activity in the joints (clinician joint count, self-reported joint count), and to compare t...

What is appraisal theory? In its simplest form, its essence is the claim that emotions are elicited by evaluations (appraisals) of events and situations. In this chapter, the authors provide a broad overview of appraisal theory, describing the observations and theoretical questions that appraisal theory was developed to address. The authors discuss...

Appraisal theory promises a lot to the student of emotion. Although nominally a theory of the cognitive antecedents of emotion, the theory aspires to much more. In addition to describing the specific cognitions that elicit various emotions (e.g., Roseman, 1984; Scherer, 1984c; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985; Smith & Lazarus, 1990), appraisal theory promis...

Prior investigations of the relation between stressors and symptoms in children with recurrent abdominal pain (RAP) have focused on major negative life events. This study used consecutive daily telephone interviews to assess daily stressors and symptoms in 154 pediatric patients with RAP and 109 well children. Results showed that patients with RAP...

Reviews progress in efforts to investigate whether, and to what degree, the appraisal construct can be used to elucidate the antecedents of, and the organization of physiological activity in, emotion. After providing a brief overview of the model of appraisal–emotion relations that they helped to develop and from which they primarily work. (e.g., S...

Prior investigations of the relation between stressors and symptoms in children with recurrent abdominal pain (RAP) have focused on major negative life events. This study used consecutive daily telephone interviews to assess daily stressors and symptoms in 154 pediatric patients with RAP and 109 well children. Results showed that patients with RAP...

This study examined the role of affiliative orientation as a dispositional antecedent of appraisals of motivational relevance and related emotions. Individuals high and low on affiliative orientation attempted to complete a teaching task that proved to be interpersonally challenging, and their appraisals and emotions were assessed both while antici...

To investigate how illness characteristics influence children's responses to ill peers. A sample of 363 4th and 5th graders responded to a vignette describing a peer with abdominal pain. In a 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 design, conditions varied by (a) evidence for organic disease, (b) presence of stress, (c) sex of vignette character, and (d) sex of respondent....

Attempts to bridge the gap between the appraisal-based study of emotional antecedents and the work examining the cognitive consequences of emotion. First, the assumptions and postulates of appraisal theory are discussed. Following a discussion of the types of appraisal models that have been tested, the authors argue that while the models have been...

To examine perceived academic, social, and athletic competence as potential moderators of the relation between symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and functional disability in adolescents and young adults with a history of recurrent abdominal pain (RAP). We assessed IBS symptoms, competence, and disability by telephone interview in RAP patie...

Although perceptions of internal control havebeen related to physical and psychosocial outcomes inchronic illness,less attention has been paid toperceptions of external sources of control and theirimplications for adaptation. One reason for this has beenthe dearth of adequate measures for assessing specificexternal control constructs. The God Locus...

The Pain Response Inventory (PRI) was developed as a multidimensional instrument to assess children's coping responses to recurrent pain. The PRI assesses 3 broad coping factors—Active, Passive, and Accommodative—each with subscales representing specific strategies for coping with pain. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to derive and cross-vali...

WE WERE VERY PLEASED to read Mark Somerfield's call for a more systems-oriented, problem-specific, microanalytic approach to the study of stress and coping incorporating qualitative as well as quantitative methods of data collection. We are in essential agreement with the main points Somerfield has advanced, and we believe that he has very effectiv...

This reference work provides broad and up-to-date coverage of the major perspectives - ethological, neurobehavioral, developmental, dynamic systems, componential - on facial expression. It reviews Darwin's legacy in the theories of Izard and Tomkins and in Fridlund's recently proposed Behavioral Ecology theory. It explores continuing controversies...

This article examines the utility of using a multidimensional instrument to assess pain coping in two samples of persons with rheumatoid arthritis (totalN = 378). The predictive validity of the newly developed Vanderbilt Multidimensional Pain Coping Inventory (VMPCI), which assesses eleven distinct coping strategies, was compared to that of the pre...

Objective. This study examined the relationship of gender and psychological well-being (PWB) in community-dwelling persons with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Method. Data from the first wave of two longitudinal panel studies of persons with RA were examined (93 men and 276 women in panel 1; 60 men and 147 women in panel 2). Subjects completed self-rep...

Objective. This study examined the relationship of gender and psychological well-being (PWB) in community-dwelling persons with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Method. Data from the first wave of two longitudinal panel studies of persons with RA were examined (93 men and 276 women in panel 1;60 men and 147 women in panel 2). Subjects completed self-repo...

In this Epilogue we step back from the four research lines that have been the focus of this two-part Special Issue and discuss four important themes that run through the Lanzetta research program: (1) the importance of the face as a fundamental channel of social communication, (2) the physiological nature of the information conveyed by facial expre...

The meaning of spontaneous skin conductance activity, and its relevance to appraisal theory, are examined. Spontaneous skin conductance activity is hypothesised to reflect task engagement, and thus to be correlated with appraisals of problem-focused coping potential. In a within-subjects design, subjects solved anagrams in which task difficulty was...

Provides a comprehensive review of John T. Lanzetta's research program on facial expression and emotion. After reviewing the study that initiated this research program (Lanzetta & Kleck, 1970), the program is described as developing along four distinct lines of research: (1) the role of facial expression in the modulation and self-regulation of emo...

This article provides an overview of the special issue of Motivation and Emotion, which will appear in two parts. This special issue examines the enduring contributions of the research of John T. Lanzetta and his colleagues on facial expression and emotion. In its entirety, the special issue consists of five articles and an epilogue. Part 1 (this i...

The present study adopts a multivariate approach to the analysis of coping and adjustment to chronic illness using two different techniques. First, using the newly developed Vanderbilt Multidimensional Pain Coping Inventory (VMPCI; C. A. Smith et al., 1995), a cluster analysis indicated that a sample of 165 persons with rheumatoid arthritis could b...