Ch.11.11-Theories of Emotion

Common understanding of emotion: an emotional experience (e.g., encountering a snarling dog) starts with a conscious feeling (feeling fear), leading to physiological changes (autonomic arousal).

Proposes that the sequence is flipped:
- Emotion-provoking event causes physiological changes before experiencing the conscious feeling.
- Example: Encountering a dog leads to physiological arousal (increased heart rate) first, resulting in the feeling of fear.

Challenges the James-Lange approach:
- Argues that autonomic responses cannot account for the diverse range of emotions experienced.
- Suggests that an emotion-provoking event triggers both the conscious feeling of fear and autonomic arousal simultaneously, independent of each other based on brain activity.

Provides evidence for the James-Lange Theory:
- Suggests that facial expressions can influence emotional experiences.
- Experiment: Holding a pencil between teeth forces a smiling expression, resulting in a happier mood.
- Control Experiment: Holding a pencil between lips creates a frowning expression, leading to decreased mood.
- Results are mixed; many studies do not replicate consistently, highlighting the variability of the effect.

Introduces an additional cognitive step:
- Following autonomic arousal, individuals interpret their environment to identify the emotion they are experiencing.
- Experiment: Participants injected with norepinephrine experienced increased arousal:
  - Informed Group: Aware of injection effects, attributed arousal to the drug.
  - Ignorant Group: Attributed feelings to an emotional confederate's outburst due to lack of knowledge about the drug effects.
  - Placebo Group: No significant response change.
Highlights potential for misattribution of arousal—where physiological responses might be incorrectly linked to environmental stimuli rather than personal experiences.

Explains varying emotional responses based on environmental cues:
- Example: Suspension Bridge Study:
  - Men confronted by an attractive researcher on a scary bridge were more likely to call her later.
  - Increased arousal from fear was misattributed to attraction.
Findings from thematic apperception tests indicated use of romantic language more often among those confronted on the scary bridge.

The misattribution of arousal can also explain phenomena like Stockholm Syndrome, where hostages feel sympathy for their captors due to confusion between fear-induced physiological arousal and emotional connection.