KEY THEME

Emotion theories emphasize different aspects of emotion, but all have influenced the direction of emotion research.

KEY QUESTIONS

For more than a century, American psychologists have actively debated theories to explain emotion. Like many controversies in psychology, the debate helped shape the direction of psychological research. And, in fact, the earliest psychological theory of emotion, proposed by William James more than a century ago, continues to influence psychological research (Dalgleish, 2004; Russell, 2014).

In this section, we’ll look at the most influential theories of emotion. As you’ll see, theories of emotion differ in terms of which component of emotion receives the most emphasis—subjective experience, physiological arousal, or expressive behavior.

Imagine that you’re walking to your car through the deserted college parking lot late at night. Suddenly, a shadowy figure emerges from behind a parked car. As he starts to move toward you, you walk more quickly. “Hey, what’s your hurry?” he calls out, and he picks up his pace.

Your heart starts pounding as you break into a run. Reaching your car, you fumble with the keys, then jump in and lock the doors. Your hands are trembling so badly you can barely get the key into the ignition, but somehow you manage, and you hit the accelerator, zooming out of the parking lot and onto a main street. Still feeling shaky, you ease off the accelerator pedal a bit, wipe your sweaty palms on your jeans, and will yourself to calm down. After several minutes, you breathe a sigh of relief.

In this example, all three emotion components are clearly present. You experienced a subjective feeling that you labeled as “fear.” You experienced physical arousal—trembling, sweating, pounding heart, and rapid breathing. And you expressed the fear, both in your facial expression and by bolting into a run. What caused this constellation of effects that you experienced as fear?

The common sense view of emotion would suggest that you (1) recognized a threatening situation and (2) reacted by feeling fearful. This subjective experience of fear (3) activated your sympathetic nervous system and (4) triggered fearful behavior. In one of the first psychological theories of emotion, William James (1884) disagreed with this common sense view, proposing a very different explanation of emotion. Danish psychologist Carl Lange proposed a very similar theory at about the same time (see James, 1894; Lange & James, 1922). Thus, this theory, illustrated in FIGURE 8.6, is known as the James-Lange theory of emotion.

Consider our example again. According to the James–Lange theory, your heart didn’t pound and you didn’t run because you were afraid. Rather, the James–Lange theory holds that you felt afraid because your heart pounded and you ran. Feedback from your physiological arousal and from the muscles involved in your behavior caused your subjective feeling of fearfulness. Thus, James believed that emotion follows this sequence: (1) We perceive a stimulus; (2) physiological and behavioral changes occur, which (3) we experience as a particular emotion.

The James–Lange theory stimulated a great deal of research, much of it consisting of attempts to disprove the theory. In 1927, the famous American physiologist Walter Cannon challenged the James–Lange theory (Dror, 2014). First, Cannon pointed out that body reactions are similar for many emotions, yet our subjective experience of various emotions is very different. For example, both fear and rage are accompanied by increased heart rate, but we have no difficulty distinguishing between the two emotions.

Second, Cannon (1927) argued that our emotional reaction to a stimulus is often faster than our physiological reaction. Here’s an example to illustrate this point: Sandy’s car started to slide out of control on a wet road. She felt fear as the car began to skid, but it was only after the car was under control, a few moments later, that her heart began to pound and her hands started to tremble. Cannon correctly noted that it can take several seconds for the physiological changes caused by activation of the sympathetic nervous system to take effect, but the subjective experience of emotion is often virtually instantaneous.

Third, artificially inducing physiological changes does not necessarily produce a related emotional experience. In one early test of the James–Lange theory, Spanish psychologist Gregorio Marañon (1924) injected several subjects with the hormone epinephrine, more commonly known as adrenaline. Epinephrine activates the sympathetic nervous system. When asked how they felt, the subjects simply reported the physical changes produced by the drug, saying, “My heart is beating very fast.” Some reported feeling “as if” they should be feeling an emotion, but they said they did not feel the emotion itself: “I feel as if I were afraid.”

James (1894) also proposed that if a person were cut off from feeling body changes, he would not experience true emotions. If he felt anything, he would experience only intellectualized, or “cold,” emotions. To test this hypothesis, Cannon and his colleagues (1927) disabled the sympathetic nervous system of cats. But the cats still reacted with catlike rage when barking dogs were present: They hissed, growled, and lifted one paw to defend themselves.

What about humans? The sympathetic nervous system operates via the spinal cord. Thus, it made sense to James (1894) that people with spinal cord injuries would experience a decrease in emotional intensity because they would not be aware of physical arousal or other bodily changes.

Once again, however, research has not supported the James–Lange theory. For example, Dutch psychologist Bob Bermond and his colleagues (1991) found that individuals with spinal cord injuries reported that their experience of fear, anger, grief, sentimentality, and joyfulness had either increased in intensity or was unchanged since their injury. Other researchers have reported similar results (see Cobos & others, 2004; Deady & others, 2010).

EVIDENCE SUPPORTING THE JAMES–LANGE THEORY

On the one hand, you’d think that the James–Lange theory of emotion should be nothing more than a historical artifact at this point. Cannon’s critique certainly seemed to demolish it. On the other hand, the brilliance of William James is reflected in the fact that researchers keep finding research support for key points in his theory of emotion (Deigh, 2014; Laird & Lacasse, 2014).

For example, look back at the Focus on Neuroscience on page 336 describing the PET scan study by Antonio Damasio and his colleagues (2000). It showed that each of the basic emotions produced a distinct pattern of brain activity, a finding that lends Rob Errera support to the James–Lange theory. To generate a particular basic emotion, the participants were asked to recall an emotionally charged memory and then to signal the researcher when they began subjectively “feeling” the target emotion.

The PET scans showed that areas of the brain’s somatosensory cortex, which processes sensory information from the skin, muscles, and internal organs, were activated during emotional experiences. Interestingly, these internal changes were registered in the somatosensory cortex before the participants reported “feeling” the emotion. Along with demonstrating the importance of internal physiological feedback in emotional experience, Damasio’s study supports another basic premise of the James–Lange theory: that physiological changes occur before we subjectively experience an emotion.

Other contemporary research has supported James’s contention that the perception of internal bodily signals is a fundamental ingredient in the subjective experience of emotion (Dalgleish, 2004; Laird & Lacasse, 2014). For example, in a study by Hugo Critchley and his colleagues (2004), participants who were highly sensitive to their own internal body signals were more likely to experience anxiety and other negative emotions than people who were less sensitive.

Research on the facial feedback hypothesis also supports the notion that our bodily responses affect our subjective experience. The facial feedback hypothesis states that expressing a specific emotion, especially facially, causes us to subjectively experience that emotion (Soussignan, 2004). Supporting this are studies showing that when people mimic the facial expressions characteristic of a given emotion, such as anger or fear, they tend to report feeling the emotion (Laird & Lacasse, 2014; Schnall & Laird, 2003).

The basic explanation for this phenomenon is that the facial muscles send feedback signals to the brain. In turn, the brain uses this information to activate and regulate emotional experience, intensifying or lessening emotion (Izard, 1990a, b). In line with this explanation, Paul Ekman and Richard Davidson (1993) demonstrated that deliberately creating a “happy” smile produces brain-activity changes similar to those caused by spontaneously producing a happy smile in response to a real event.

A new wrinkle in facial feedback research comes from the popularity of Botox injections to paralyze selected facial muscles to produce a more youthful appearance. Once paralyzed, the targeted muscles no longer send feedback to the brain. Botox injections can dampen emotional experience, although they don’t appear to eliminate it completely (Davis & others, 2010; Havas & others, 2010). However, an ingenious study by David Deal and Tanya Chartrand (2011) demonstrated that paralyzing facial muscles with Botox may make people less able to recognize emotional expressions in other people. The explanation? We tend to automatically mimic the facial expressions of other people. Although we’re not aware of it, feedback from our facial muscles helps us to better understand their emotional displays.

Collectively, the evidence for the facial feedback hypothesis adds support for aspects of the James–Lange theory.

A second theory of emotion, proposed by Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer, was influential for a short time. Schachter and Singer (1962) agreed with James that physiological arousal is a central element in emotion. But they also agreed with Cannon that physiological arousal is very similar for different emotions. Thus, arousal alone would not produce an emotional response.

Instead, Schachter and Singer proposed that we cognitively label physiological arousal as a given emotion based on our appraisal of a situation. Thus, according to the two-factor theory of emotion, illustrated in FIGURE 8.7, emotion is the result of the interaction of physiological arousal and the cognitive label we use to explain our stirred-up state.

Schachter and Singer (1962) tested their theory in a clever, but flawed, experiment. Male volunteers were injected with epinephrine, which produces sympathetic nervous system arousal: accelerated heartbeat, rapid breathing, trembling, and so forth. One group was informed that their symptoms were caused by the injection, but the other group was not given this explanation.

One at a time, the volunteers experienced a situation that was designed to be either irritating or humorous. Schachter and Singer predicted that the subjects who were informed that their physical symptoms were caused by the drug injection would be less likely to attribute their symptoms to an emotion caused by the situation. Conversely, the subjects who were not informed that their physical symptoms were caused by the drug injection would label their symptoms as an emotion produced by the situation.

The results partially supported their predictions. The subjects who were not informed tended to report feeling either happier or angrier than the informed subjects.

Schachter and Singer’s theory inspired a flurry of research. The bottom line of those research efforts? The two-factor theory of emotion received little support (Reisenzein, 1983). Nevertheless, Schachter and Singer’s theory stimulated a new line of research on the importance of cognition in emotion (Moors, 2009).

To help illustrate the final theory of emotion that we’ll consider, let’s go back to the shadowy figure lurking in your college parking lot. Suppose that as the guy called out to you, “Hey, what’s your hurry?” you recognized his voice as that of a good friend. Your emotional reaction, of course, would be very different. This simple observation is the basic premise of the cognitive appraisal theory of emotion.

Developed by Richard Lazarus and Craig Smith (1988), the cognitive appraisal theory of emotion asserts that the most important aspect of an emotional experience is your cognitive interpretation, or appraisal, of the situation or stimulus. That is, emotions result from our appraisal of the personal meaning of events and experiences. Thus, the same situation might elicit very different emotions in different people (Moors, 2009; C. Smith & others, 2006).

So, in the case of the shadowy figure in the parking lot, your relief that you were not on the verge of being attacked by a mugger could quickly turn to another emotion. If it’s a good friend you hadn’t seen for a while, your relief might turn to pleasure, even joy. If it’s someone that you’d prefer to avoid, relief might transform itself into annoyance or even anger.

At first glance, the cognitive appraisal theory and the Schachter–Singer two-factor theory seem very similar. Both theories emphasize the importance of cognitive appraisal. However, the two-factor theory says that emotion results from physiological arousal plus a cognitive label. In contrast, some appraisal theorists stressed that cognitive appraisal is the essential trigger for an emotional response (Lazarus, 1995).

Some critics of the cognitive appraisal approach objected that emotional reactions to events were virtually instantaneous—too rapid to allow for the process of cognitive appraisal. Instead, Robert Zajonc (1998, 2000) suggested, we feel first and think later. However, today’s appraisal theorists recognize that emotions can be triggered in multiple ways (Moors & others, 2013; Scherer, 2013). Complex stimuli—like social situations or personal interactions—must be consciously appraised before an emotion is generated. And complex emotional responses—like mixed emotions, pride, shame, or guilt—are likely to involve conscious, cognitive processes (Izard, 2007).

On the other hand, some emotional responses are virtually instantaneous, bypassing conscious consideration. As Joseph LeDoux and other neuroscientists have demonstrated, the human brain can respond to biologically significant threats without involving conscious cognitive processes (Kihlstrom & others, 2000). So at least in some instances, we do seem to feel first and think later.

Psychologists have been interested in the topics of motivation and emotion since the very beginning of psychology as a science. Today, psychologists are acutely aware that all motives reflect the dynamic interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors, including cultural forces. Like any complex undertaking, Sandy’s experiences in Nepal reflected many different motivational forces, from the desire to help others to her drive to challenge herself in a difficult and unfamiliar environment.

Emotions, too, reflect the interaction among biological factors shaped by evolution and personal, cultural, and social factors. As you’ve read this chapter, we hope you’ve thought about the multiple factors that influence your own motives and emotional responses in different areas of your life. Finally, in Psych for Your Life, we’ll show you how you can use psychological research to help you achieve your goals and aspirations.