They felt that the physiological aspects appeared first, followed by a cognitive appraisal of the situation. The environmental stimulus simultaneously signals your brain to feel the emotion and your body to physiologically shift at the same time (D’Hondt, 2010).Īfter the work of Cannon & Bard, Schachter & his student Singer came up with their own evidence-based theory on emotion. This theory states that emotion and physical state occur simultaneously. Based on their observations, they developed a new theory. In experiments on cats, they removed portions of the cat’s nervous system (responsible for physiological sensations) and found that these cats still produced emotional behavior (Laird & Lacasse, 2014). Years later, Cannon & Bard criticized the James-Lange model. This sensation is unconsciously interpreted by your brain as an emotion, creating the mental state (Critchley, 2009 Northoff, 2012). An environmental stimulus triggers a physiological sensation.

This theory asserts that emotion occurs physically before mentally. James & Lange came up with 1 of the first theories on emotional processing in the late 19th century. The 3 most well-known theories on emotional processing are: Let’s take a journey through some of the psychosocial theories behind both the mental and physical feelings of emotion.

When you are happy you may feel warm and relaxed, while anger may cause you to turn red and feel hot sensations.

Most emotions have both a cognitive and physiological component. Emotions also serve as a beautiful model for the Mind-Body connection. They provide us with internal motivations to reinforce or abolish activities that elicit them.

James lange theory of emotion