ABSTRACT
As I near the end of this book, I am struck by how far this research program has really come. After reading my description of the simple model that guided my dissertation, and the problems I had in operationalizing any search processes, the reader should not find it strange to learn that I am very pleasantly surprised to be able to write this much about what was eventually accomplished. But this chapter is not about how far things came or what was accomplished. It is about where things need to go from here. In the role of someone making suggestions about directions for the future, I will criticize what we have done as well as rely upon it. Through all of this, I will state my belief that cognitive appraisal research will continue to be a viable, vibrant area for research, although I think that the cognitive research in the future will need to be different from the cognitive research in the past. Nonetheless, I will begin to discuss directions for future research that are tied to the major pieces of our original model, before going on to suggest completely different approaches. Finally, I will present some thoughts about things that need to happen for this research to continue to progress, and the potential barriers that need to be overcome. With that as introduction, I will begin by examining issues for future research based on our original cognitive model.
