Psychology
Cannon Bard Theory
The Cannon-Bard theory of emotion proposes that emotions and physiological responses occur simultaneously, rather than one causing the other. According to this theory, an emotional stimulus triggers both the experience of an emotion and the physiological response independently. This challenges the earlier James-Lange theory, which suggested that physiological responses lead to the experience of emotion.
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3 Key excerpts on "Cannon Bard Theory"
eBook - PDF- Wayne Proudfoot(Author)
- 1987(Publication Date)
- University of California Press(Publisher)
Aristotle recognized that emotional states have both physiological and cognitive compo-nents. We have seen that people often attribute emotions to themselves or others in the absence of any feeling or any sort of physiological change. Ascriptions of emotion are often made to explain behavior rather than feelings. I may conclude that someone is angry or jealous even in the face of his sincere denial of any feeling of anger or jealousy. People may be unaware of their own emotions. When a person reports a feel-ing of anger, jealousy, joy, or love, however, he or she is aware of feeling an emotion. Aristotle's analysis shows that these emotional experiences have both a material and a conceptual component, but it says nothing about how these are related. On the basis of an ingenious set of experiments, the social psychologist Stanley Schachter (1971) has advanced a two-factor theory of emotion, in which he distinguishes between physiological arousal and cognitive appraisal. Schachter began by reconsidering James's claim that emotions are the feelings or perceptions of bodily changes. If emotions were identical with bodily changes, then different emotions would be asso-ciated with recognizably different bodily states. Walter Cannon (1927, 1929) cast considerable doubt on James's theory by noting the following points: the total separation of the visceral from the central nervous system does not alter emotional behavior; the same visceral changes occur in very different emotional states and in nonemotional states; the viscera are relatively insensitive structures; visceral changes are too slow to be a source of emotional feeling; and the artificial induction of visceral changes that are typical of strong emotions does not produce the emotions (Schachter, 1971: I). 7 Schachter hypothesized that the specific character of emo-tional states may be determined by cognitive factors. In an EMOTION
eBook - PDF- Renée Jeffery(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Their ‘two-factor theory’ argued that, by drawing on past experience, cognition provides ‘the framework within which one understands and labels his feelings’. That is, cognitive reflection upon an immediate situation ‘determines whether the state of physiological arousal will be labeled as “anger”, “joy”, “fear”, or whatever’. 86 To demonstrate this, Schachter and Singer conducted an experiment in which they injected one group of subjects with epinephrine, a drug that produces the same types of neural responses that accompany intense emotions, for example increased heart rate and respiration rate, increased blood flow to the muscles and brain, increased concen- trations of lactic acid and blood sugar, and decreased cutaneous blood 81 Bedford, ‘Emotions’, p. 294. 82 Bedford, ‘Emotions’, p. 294. 83 Bedford, ‘Emotions’, p. 298. 84 Bedford, ‘Emotions’, pp. 303–4. 85 Pitcher, ‘Emotion’, p. 335. 86 Stanley Schachter and Jerome E. Singer, ‘Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State’, Psychological Review, 69, 5 (1962), p. 380. 142 What is an emotion? flow, and a second group with a placebo of saline solution. Some of the subjects were provided with an accurate explanation of the bodily sensa- tions they would experience as a result of the injection, others an inaccu- rate explanation, and some no explanation at all. The subjects were then subjected to a number of social situations designed to test whether the subjects could be manipulated into experiencing anger and euphoria. Schachter and Singer found that those subjects who had been injected with epinephrine and had not been given any explanation for the bodily sensations it produced labelled the state they found themselves in ‘in terms of the cognitions that were available’ to them. 87 That is, they could be manipulated into describing the sensations they experienced in terms of the disparate states of euphoria and anger.
eBook - PDF- Robert Plutchik, Henry Kellerman, Robert Plutchik, Henry Kellerman(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
A second line arises from the therapeutic work and thought of cognitive behavior therapists such as Ellis (1962), Beck (1971), Goldfried (1979), Meichenbaum (1977), and Mahoney (1977). Although their primary concerns are with treatment interventions, they have adopted an ap-proach to emotion that explicitly argues that the beliefs or assumptions a per-son holds about himself or herself in the world determine the emotional response to daily events. When such beliefs are irrational, as in the idea that it is a dire necessity for an adult human being to be loved or approved by vir-tually every significant other person in his community (Ellis, 1962, p. 61), then the likelihood of misconstruing a situation and responding with a negatively toned emotion is greatly increased. There is a parallel between the key tenets of our cognitive approach to emotions and the premises underlying cognitive behavior therapists. The clinical implications are that if one changes what the person thinks and believes one can also change the pattern of emo-tional reactions to ordinary social transactions. 2 The Yerkes-Dodson law (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908) states, in effect, that, as drive tension or arousal increases, performance first improves to an optimal level and then declines. This is the classic inverted U-shaped curve. 192 RICHARD S. LAZARUS, ALLEN D. KANNER, AND SUSAN FOLKMAN EMOTIONS FROM A COGNITIVE-PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE A cognitive theory of emotion, at its bottom line, assumes that emotion arises from how a person construes the outcome, actual or anticipated, of a transaction or bit of commerce with the environment. This perspective sug-gests that adult humans may well be the most emotional creatures on earth, since our ability to use complex, symbolic cognitive processes permits subtle distinctions to be made and later recalled among many types of information.
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