In reply to the commentaries of Clay-Warner, Gendolla, Nesse, Shweder, and Zachar, I repeat the essential features of appraisal theories of the second flavor: They take emotional components as the phenomenon to be explained, and they strive for a multilevel mechanistic explanation that leaves room for complex and dynamical processes or mechanisms. Every mechanistic explanation starts with an accurate description of regularities between inputs and outputs. Regularities do not preclude context-dependent variety, because there is no limit to the number of (...) input factors that can influence the output, and back. (shrink)

It is time to abandon essentialism in emotional research: Our sociodynamic model proposes to study emotions as contextualized processes, rather than as states. This does not mean eschewing mental processes, but rather studying them dynamically and in open interaction with their environment. Our proposal is not to shift the focus of emotion studies to a different level. Rather, placing emotions in their social context renders their psychological qualities understandable and predictable. This is illustrated by some examples from my own cross-cultural (...) research. (shrink)