According to (Glassman 2002), arousal plays a major part in emotion but it cannot account alone for the wide range of emotions that we experience in our lives. Walter B. Cannon (1927) provides an alternative theory. Walter Cannon, being a physiologist, discovered that individuals whose limbs were paralysed still had the same feelings of emotion. Physiological changes in the body take longer to occur than emotional feelings, so therefore they could not be the cause and many of the same physiological changes occur when different emotions are felt, therefore this cannot be the primary indicator of which particular emotion is being felt (Malim & Birch 1998). Cannon was the first in his field to discover the fight or flight state of arousal and teamed up with a colleague, Bard (1927) and studied how the central nervous system was influenced by input of the senses. They felt that the body’s preparation for action and the feeling of emotion occurred at the same time, but from different areas of the brain. According to the Cannon-Bard theory the two reactions are not linked together and can be felt independently and therefore the feeling of emotion is neither the cause nor the result of the two responses. It is difficult to differentiate between the subjective response and the physical reaction and it was this that prompted Maranon (1924) to undertake a case study. (Hayes 1994) reports that a group of people were injected with adrenaline and were asked to record their responses, about 75% reported their physical symptoms such as increased heart rate and sweating, but about 25% said that they felt afraid or angry and it was this response that prompted him to link the feeling of emotion with the physiological response and therefore disagreeing with the Cannon-Bard theory.
There are many components that contribute to emotion. (Atkinson, Atkinson, Smith, Bem & Nolen-Hoeksema 1996) state that firstly there is the awareness of the stimulus, you see the lion and realise that it could be a possible danger. Secondly, a subjective feeling is presented, apprehension is felt which will lead to fear if the lion gets any closer. Physiological changes of the body then take place, the heart starts to beat faster as adrenaline is released and the body starts to sweat. It is then apparent, by the facial expression that the person is frightened. The thought process then presents itself and cognitive awareness of the situation comes to the fore. It may be that the person has heard or seen on the news someone being killed or chased by a lion, it has suddenly become reality and this could happen to them. Finally, the bodily reaction to the situation, you experience the fight or flight response. Most theorists agree with these components, but no one has proved in what order they are experienced. None of these components is an emotion in its self but each can influence the other. Some theorists agree with the reciprocal effect each component has on the other, does one compound on the other to make it more intense. Which components are responsible for differentiating the emotions, why does one emotion feel different to another? Many theorists studied one or more of these components in depth; Charles Darwin (1872) was the first scientist to note that across cultures the same facial expressions accompanied the same emotional states, (Gross 2001). He noted that expression is an important factor in communication and human beings have perfected this for the purpose of survival.
Ekman (1972) studied facial expression and realised that across cultures there are six basic emotions, happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear and disgust, they are universal and he believed them to be innate. According to (Hayes 1994), he grouped together various people and asked them to arrange their facial muscles in the form of the basic emotions, it was found that by putting on a happy face, the participants started to feel the emotion of happiness and the physiological changes in the body such as increased blood flow to the brain and the resulting release of neurotransmitters are said to play a significant part in the feeling of emotion. (McIlveen & Gross 1996)
Emotions form part of what makes a person who he or she is. To help us understand emotion, we need to look at the positive and negative aspects. On the positive side, when looking at the evolutionary aspect, emotions are important for our survival. According to (Eysenck 2002) in studying the fight or flight process Le Doux (1989) identified certain neural pathways which have a link to the feeling of emotion. He identified that there were two specific pathways through which sensory information pass through according to the emotional stimuli. The first pathway involves the use of the middle part of the brain, the limbic system, all animals possess this and it is this part that gives us instinct. Le Doux believed that this circuit allows us to act quickly in a threatening situation and this could mean the difference between life and death. The second pathway involves the cortex which supplies the process of thinking to the circuit, and this gives us the ability to evaluate a situation and make decisions as to whether we should run or if it is better to stay and fight whatever is the most appropriate. The negative side to emotion is that we may feel too much emotion and become irrational and out of control. Aristotle and Plato believed that some emotions could get in the way of intelligent and rational thoughts. It wouldn’t be ideal to only feel good emotions though; it seems that in order to feel happy you need to know how it feels to experience sadness.
So far the theories of emotion studied here have focused on the physiological aspects of how the body responds and what happens inside the brain. Stanley Schacter and Jerome Singer disagreed with the theories already studied and as outlined in (McIlveen and Gross 1996) they believed that not only does the experience of emotion depend on the biological base but also to feel true emotion you must be able to cognitively appraise the situation or in other words, interpret what is happening. They called this the two factor theory or cognitive labelling theory. Schacter and Singer believed that that each emotion has the same physiological base and it is the interpretation of that feeling that determines the emotional state. The level of arousal affects how we respond to emotional stimuli, too little and we may not have the motivation to succeed but too much could affect performance and be detrimental and according to Schacter and Singer it is the level of arousal that determines the degree of the emotion felt. They conducted a very famous test in 1962 where the participants were injected with adrenaline in order to artificially produce arousal, but they were told that it was a vitamin. Some were told how they would feel and others were misinformed. They were put in a room with a happy person and an angry person. It was found that the group who weren’t told of the effects showed the higher degree of emotion because they were interpreting how they felt as a result of the happy or angry people. The others did not interpret this and therefore their emotional state was lower.
According to (Eysenck 2002) many people feel that this was an artificial study, different emotions are felt according to the varying degrees of the same physiological changes. Levenson et al (1990) concluded that different emotions affected the body temperature and heart rates in differing ways. Hohman (1966) undertook some experiments whose results supported the cognitive labelling theory. He tested 25 patients who had spinal injury and were paralyzed. They were subjected to certain conditions that should provoke anger, fear or grief. They reported that they mentally responded but didn’t show the same physiological changes. This could also show that the sympathetic branch of the ANS was affected by the injury and the same degree of physiological changes did not occur so therefore the degree of emotion was affected, but not the type of emotion felt.
Richard Lazarus (1982) studied a cognitive orientated theory of emotion and believed that we need to interpret the feeling of emotion in order to experience it and in some circumstances we can control our emotions and not feel them at all, this theory can lead us to assume that emotion could be preceded by interpretation of the stimulus. (McIlveen and Gross 1996)
To summarise, James Lange believed that the feeling of emotion was as a response to the bodily changes; Cannon-Bard disagreed and felt that the feeling of emotion was felt simultaneously with the change in behaviour. In response to this Schacter and Singer felt they were both wrong and maintained that not only did the body show physiological changes but the interpretation of these changes led to the feeling of emotion. There is no proof of who is right but with the view of more recent studies and research, it seems likely that the two factors of cognition and physiology both play a part in determining our emotions. The question What is Emotion? has not yet been answered and it seems that we may never reach a decision. It remains unethical to induce emotional responses in order to carry out research and there is still no one theory of emotion. Emotions are complex and the exploration from the biological level of the ANS right up to the cognitive interpretation of the emotional feeling can only help us to get an idea of what emotion really is.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Atkinson, R.L, Atkinson, R.C, Smith, E.E, Bem, D.J and Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (1996) Hilgards’s Introduction to Psychology. 12th ed. Harcourt Brace College Publishers, USA.
Eysenck, M.W. (2002) Simply Psychology. 2nd ed. Psychology Press Ltd, Hove.
Glassman, W.E. (2000) Approaches to Psychology. 3rd ed. Open University Press, Buckingham
Gross, R. (2001) The Science of Mind and Behaviour. 4th ed. Hodder and Stoughton, London
Hayes.N. (1994) Foundations of Psychology an Introductory Text. 1st ed. Routledge, London
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Malin and Birch. A (1998) Introductory Psychology. 1st ed. Macmillan Press Ltd, Basingstoke.
McIlveen, R and Gross, R. (1996) BioPsychology. 1st ed. Hodder and Stoughton Educational, Trowbridge.
