Compare and contrast the James-Lange and Schachter-Singer theories of emotion.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Students' answers may vary.

The answer should contain the following information:

James-Lange theory: To William James and Carl Lange, who were among the first researchers to explore the nature of emotions, emotional experience is, very simply, a reaction to instinctive bodily events that occur as a response to some situation or event in the environment. They suggested that for every major emotion there is an accompanying physiological or "gut" reaction of internal organs-called a visceral experience. It is this specific pattern of visceral response that leads people to label the emotional experience. In sum, James and Lange proposed that people experience emotions as a result of physiological changes that produce specific sensations. The brain interprets these sensations as specific kinds of emotional experiences. This view has come to be called the James-Lange theory of emotion.

Schachter-Singer theory: This approach to explaining emotions emphasizes that people identify the emotion they are experiencing by observing their environment and comparing themselves with others. It supports a cognitive view of emotions in which emotions are determined jointly by a relatively nonspecific kind of physiological arousal and the labeling of that arousal on the basis of cues from the environment. Although later research has found that arousal is more specific than Schachter and Singer believed, they were right in assuming that when the source of physiological arousal is unclear, people may look to their surroundings to determine what they are experiencing.