 Once our emotional repertoire is established, we interpret new situations through the lens of different paradigm scenarios. When a particular scenario suggests itself as an interpretation, it arranges or rearranges our perceptual, cognitive, and inferential dispositions. When a paradigm scenario is evoked by a novel situation, the resulting emotion may or may not be appropriate to the situation that triggers it. Thus, a childhood fear of clowns may be reappraised and overcome in adult life as a result of a more realistic appraisal. In that sense at least, emotions can be assessed for rationality (see  section 10  for further discussion).