So let's continue our discussion of emotions.
If you remember from the previous video,
emotion is made up of a series of cognitive, physiological,
and behavioral responses to a stimulus.
But which response comes first?
And this one of those topics that I think a lot of us
take for granted.
It's something that occurs in everyday life.
But we generally don't break it down
and think of it in these components
and wonder, gee, which one comes first?
So thank goodness we have psychologists
who do that for us.
And as you might imagine, this is a pretty complicated topic.
So there isn't just one theory of emotion.
There's many theories of emotion.
And for our purposes, we're going
to discuss four different theories of emotion.
The first one is called the James-Lange theory of emotion.
And it's named after two researchers who
both independently came up with this theory back in the 1800s.
So they actually weren't working together.
They just each came up with it around the same time.
So in the interest of fairness, they
decided to name it after both of them.
So that's why it's known as the James-Lange theory of emotion.
And what it hypothesizes is that the experience of emotion
is due to the perception of your physiologic responses.
So what does that mean?
Well, let's think about an example of maybe holding
your pet.
Let's say you have a pet cat.
And holding your pet cat elicits the emotion of happiness.
So how does it do that?
Well according to James-Lange theory of emotion,
holding your pet cat causes the physiologic response of maybe
increased heart rate.
Certain neurotransmitters change in your brain.
Maybe you'll start to smile as you're holding your cat.
And what makes the James-Lange theory of emotion unique
is that they say it's the interpretation
of this physiologic response that
causes the emotion of happiness.
So it's not actually holding your cat per se
that's making you happy.
It's what the cat is doing to your body that
makes you feel the way you do.
So it's your awareness of these processes occurring
that make you realize you're happy.
In another example, you could say that when you're sad,
you don't cry because you're sad.
You're sad because you cry.
It's your mind's interpretation of your physiological response.
Now, you might be sitting there finding that hard to believe.
And if you feel that way, it might
interest you to know that there are other theories of emotion
as well that sprung up because they didn't agree
with this James-Lange approach.
And one such theory is known as the Cannon-Bard theory
of emotion.
And these were two theorists who disagreed
with the James-Lange theory.
And they believed there were some major flaws in the idea
that physiologic responses triggered emotion.
So first they felt that a person could experience
physiological arousal without feeling any particular emotion.
So think about it.
Your heart will race when you're feeling afraid.
But your heart also races if you just had a long run.
So how can that be?
If the physiologic response was all
that was necessary to produce an emotion,
shouldn't any person with a racing heart feel afraid?
In that same line of thought, these researchers
also noticed that many different emotions
had the same patterns of physiological response.
So think about like your heart racing or rapid breathing,
those accompany feelings of anger, as well as excitement.
And those are two totally different emotions.
And lastly, they felt that the physiological response system
was just too slow to produce emotions that often seemed
to happen almost instantly.
So for example, if you hear a loud sound,
maybe you'll feel fear or surprise almost instantly.
And subsequent physiologic responses of your heart racing,
increased muscle tone, et cetera, they come later.
And the theory they put forth was the Cannon-Bard theory.
And they believed that the physiological responses
and the experience of emotion both occurred simultaneously.
So you have an event occurring, which
causes a physiological response, as well
as an emotion at the same time.
So going back to the example of holding your cat, if you
hold your cat, that's the event.
And by holding your cat, maybe your heart rate
starts to increase ever so slightly.
Maybe there's some changes going on in your brain
in terms of your neurotransmitters.
And while that's happening, at the same time
you're feeling a feeling of joy.
And that's the emotion that you're experiencing.
But the main point here is this theory
says these two actions happen at the same time.
Now, another key theory of emotion
is the Schachter-Singer theory of emotion.
And in this view, physiological and cognitive responses
may simultaneously form the experience of emotion.
More specifically, if we become physiologically aroused,
we don't feel a specific emotion until we're
able to label or identify the reason for the situation.
So in our previous example, we spoke about holding your cat.
So the event is holding your cat,
which produces a physiological response of again maybe
increased heart rate or changes in your neurotransmitter
levels.
But we don't necessarily feel happy
until we consciously label the situation.
So you identify the reason for this physiologic response.
And you identify the reason for the event.
So you would say to yourself, this is really nice.
I like holding my cat.
This makes me happy.
And that's what produces the emotion of happiness,
this identification and that cognitive ability
to understand what's going on that causes it.
Now, another theory is known as the Lazarus theory.
And that proposed that the experience of emotion
depends on how the experience is cognitively appraised.
Now, you might think that sounds very similar to the one we just
discussed in the Schachter-Singer theory.
But it's different.
And I'll show you why.
So we have an event, let's say again holding your cat.
In the Lazarus theory, next comes appraisal or labeling
the situation.
And what the Lazarus theory says,
if we label the situation as bad,
the emotion will be negative.
And if we label the situation as good,
the emotion will be positive.
So one of differences here is that how
we label the event is completely dependent
on personal experience or cultural differences
and situational factors.
And once this appraisal has occurred,
then the emotion will occur simultaneously
with the physiological response.
And as you can see, it is a different order of things,
as compared to the Schachter-Singer theory.
So using our example holding a cat,
if a person has held a cat before and happened
to be maybe bitten by a cat or had
a bad experience with a cat, that individual
may label the situation as scary.
And the emotion that will be produced is fear.
But on the other hand, if someone
is a cat lover, grown up with cats their whole life,
they might label that situation of holding a cat as wonderful
and feel joy.
So it's all in the label.
And the way I like to think about this
is in terms of hobbies.
So take skydiving, for example.
Some people would label the activity
of jumping out of a plane as something terrifying.
And they would experience the emotion of fear.
Whereas someone else who's maybe a daredevil,
they would label the situation as exhilarating.
And they would experience happiness.
But as you can see here, the event of skydiving is the same.
But it's producing two very different emotions
in different people, who have different appraisals
on the event occurring.
So that's the four theories of emotion
that we're going to discuss today.