It is late at night, a person is walking alone, when he begins to hear footsteps approaching him. To delve into the emotion behind this situation there are many different theories that could help in explaining certain reactions, and their sources. Common wisdom might say that the average person would get scared and run away, but certain theories could prove otherwise. Theories such as James-Lange theory, Cannon-Bard theory, and Schacter-Singer theory provide an array of perspectives and ideas to describe an emotional reaction. This essay will consider these perspectives in an attempt to predict the sequence of events that would occur as a reaction to this experience.
The first theory to take into consideration is the James-Lange theory. By …show more content…
The idea behind this theory is that an emotion-provoking event leads simultaneously to an emotion and to bodily reactions. The theory was formulated when Cannon and Bard concluded that psychological changes occur too slowly to incur an emotional reaction. These two psychologists, and their theory would say that a person hearing footsteps in the night would simultaneously trigger the emotion of fear, and the physical reaction of …show more content…
This theory states that emotions are produced by an undifferentiated state of arousal along with an explanation of the arousal. Basically an undifferentiated state of arousal means that no matter what emotion a person is about to experience, the state of arousal in indifferent. Next is to identify the source of the arousal, and after that has been accomplished the emotion is determined. In the footsteps at night example, this theory claims that the footsteps would trigger the "fight or flight," or undifferentiated arousal. The person aroused would conclude that the arousal is due to footsteps behind them, and in turn label the arousal as
The first theory to take into consideration is the James-Lange theory. By …show more content…
The idea behind this theory is that an emotion-provoking event leads simultaneously to an emotion and to bodily reactions. The theory was formulated when Cannon and Bard concluded that psychological changes occur too slowly to incur an emotional reaction. These two psychologists, and their theory would say that a person hearing footsteps in the night would simultaneously trigger the emotion of fear, and the physical reaction of …show more content…
This theory states that emotions are produced by an undifferentiated state of arousal along with an explanation of the arousal. Basically an undifferentiated state of arousal means that no matter what emotion a person is about to experience, the state of arousal in indifferent. Next is to identify the source of the arousal, and after that has been accomplished the emotion is determined. In the footsteps at night example, this theory claims that the footsteps would trigger the "fight or flight," or undifferentiated arousal. The person aroused would conclude that the arousal is due to footsteps behind them, and in turn label the arousal as