Comparing Holmes-Lange, Cannon-Bard, And Schacter-Singer
It's late at night, it's dark, and you're all alone as you're making a long trek home. Suddenly, you hear footsteps approaching you from behind as you take a shortcut through an alley. Naturally, the emotion most people in this situation would experience instantly and most prevalently is fear. The question lies in how this emotion manifested itself in the body, and what exactly is this emotion? Is it a product of our thoughts about what is currently transpiring, or are our thoughts a product of this emotion? Psychologists have long been attempting to answer this question and several have generated different theories. In this essay, I will examine theories proposed by James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, and Schacter-Singer as well as describe how each
…show more content…
They had similar hypotheses and published their theories in the same time frame, so it is now often referred to as the James-Lange theory. This conjecture stated that our emotions are simply our interpretations of our bodily reactions to stimuli. They believed that emotion is less of a physical function and more of a cognitive thought process. For example, when hearing those footsteps in the alley, a person's heart might start beating faster, their palms might get sweaty, their senses may heighten, and they would likely pick up their pace. According to James and Lange, these symptoms aren't the product of our fear. In contrast, these physiological and behavioral reactions are to the stimulus of the footsteps, and the emotion of fear is just our interpretation of those reactions. So basically, we first react to a stimulus, then our brain processes the emotion. Next, I will examine the Cannon-Bard …show more content…
Their theory is frequently called the two factor theory of emotion, because it states that two psychological events are required to produce an emotion. First, an undifferentiated state of arousal following the emotion-provoking incident occurs. After we experience that state of arousal, we then find an explanation for that arousal and attach an emotion to it. So once again, when walking in that alley, the second our ears hear those ominous footsteps, our body would enter into an alerted mode. We would then attribute our arousal to the footsteps, and label our arousal as fear before finally feeling the emotion of
They had similar hypotheses and published their theories in the same time frame, so it is now often referred to as the James-Lange theory. This conjecture stated that our emotions are simply our interpretations of our bodily reactions to stimuli. They believed that emotion is less of a physical function and more of a cognitive thought process. For example, when hearing those footsteps in the alley, a person's heart might start beating faster, their palms might get sweaty, their senses may heighten, and they would likely pick up their pace. According to James and Lange, these symptoms aren't the product of our fear. In contrast, these physiological and behavioral reactions are to the stimulus of the footsteps, and the emotion of fear is just our interpretation of those reactions. So basically, we first react to a stimulus, then our brain processes the emotion. Next, I will examine the Cannon-Bard …show more content…
Their theory is frequently called the two factor theory of emotion, because it states that two psychological events are required to produce an emotion. First, an undifferentiated state of arousal following the emotion-provoking incident occurs. After we experience that state of arousal, we then find an explanation for that arousal and attach an emotion to it. So once again, when walking in that alley, the second our ears hear those ominous footsteps, our body would enter into an alerted mode. We would then attribute our arousal to the footsteps, and label our arousal as fear before finally feeling the emotion of