Abstract

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.