Schachter-Singer Theory of Emotion

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The Schachter-Singer theory of emotion, also called the Two Factor theory of emotion, is a modification of the James-Lange theory. The James-Lange theory suggested that a physiological change directly caused the emotion. The Two Factor theory promotes an additional step, where our cognitive appraisal of the stimulus and our physiology is taken into account before an emotion is produced.

When a stimulus produces a physiological change, a person uses environmental cues to understand the change, and the final product is an emotion. This theory was based on experiments that Schachter and Singer performed, where participants were injected with either epinephrine or a placebo. Some of the participants who were given epinephrine were told what the effects of the epinephrine were, and others were not told what the epinephrine’s effects were. After the injection, all the participants interacted with a person who was acting very happy or very angry. The results were that participants who received an explanation as to how epinephrine works were much less emotional. The experimenters concluded that they were able to understand what was occurring to them and make a conscious choice to control their emotions. From this, Schachter and Singer developed the idea that people use environmental cues to explain physiological changes, which in turn results in an emotional output.

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