Helpful contextual information before or after negative events: effects on appraisal and emotional reaction

This study investigated the effect of helpful contextual information, presented before and after a negative event, on modifying appraisal and emotional reaction. Through the scenario technique, a basic situation of negative outcome (in health or hobby domain) entailing appraisal of high responsibility and low remediability (control condition) was manipulated by adding—separately or together—two types of contextual information able to modify the two appraisal dimensions: knowing that other people shared the same outcome (sharing) and knowing that it was possible to remediate the negative outcome (remedy possibility). In half scenarios, the information was presented before the event, and in the other half after the event. We expected that sharing and remedy possibility would selectively affect the two appraisal dimensions which in turn would selectively affect the emotions chosen to assess emotional reaction. We also expected that the event-preceding information would be more effective than the event-following information. On the whole, the results corroborated our predictions but also revealed unexpected effects that have been discussed.