The Legacy of Cognition-Arousal Theory: Introduction to a Special Section of Emotion Review

Abstract

Schachter’s cognition-arousal theory has been highly influential in emotion psychology and beyond. The six contributions to this special section investigate the origins of Schachter’s theory in his previous work on affiliation; systematize the variety of existing versions of cognition-arousal theory; summarize recent cognition-feeling theories of emotion and associated empirical work influenced by Schachter’s theory; and critically reexamine two assumptions of cognition-arousal theory: the assumption, made in some interpretations of the theory, that cognitive appraisals are components of emotions, and the assumption that bodily feelings cannot alone constitute emotional experiences.

Keywords

cognition-arousal theory emotional experience Schachter theory of emotion two-factor theory

According to a ranking published in 2002, Stanley Schachter belongs to the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century (Haggbloom et al., 2002). Schachter’s fame rests in significant part on his two-factor, cognition-arousal theory of emotion, which is the focus of this special section of Emotion Review.

The theory, first published by Schachter and Singer (1962), was presented to the scientific community as a neo-Jamesian formulation that preserved the valid assumptions of James’s (1890/1950) theory of emotion while accommodating valid objections raised against it. To recall, the core assumption of James’s theory is that emotions (emotional experiences) are feelings of the bodily changes caused by emotion-eliciting stimuli (for more detail, see Reisenzein & Stephan, 2014). This theory of the nature of emotions implies that bodily sensations are both necessary and sufficient for emotions (at least for a core set) and that different emotions (joy, anger, fear, etc.) are marked by distinct patterns of bodily feelings. A main objection of James’s critics, whose most influential representative was Cannon (1927), was that these implications of the theory are empirically false (for more on this and other objections to James, see Deonna & Teroni, 2017; Reisenzein & Stephan, 2014).

While many felt that Cannon’s critique had put James’s theory to rest, Schachter, like several others (e.g., Duffy, 1941; Marañon, 1924) believed that the criticisms were only partly justified. In particular, Schachter (1964) was unconvinced by Cannon’s (1927) objections against the necessity of bodily feelings for emotions; rather, he remained convinced by James’s (1890/1950) argument that bodily feelings are required to explain the “affective warmth” of emotional experiences, and their intensity. However, Schachter accepted Cannon’s arguments that bodily feelings are not sufficient for emotions and are too unspecific to account for the qualitative distinctions between them. To remedy these perceived deficits of James’s theory, Schachter (1964; Schachter & Singer, 1962) proposed that an emotion is the product of two factors, an emotion-unspecific feeling of arousal, and an emotion-specific cognition. More precisely, according to the standard, attributional interpretation of Schachter’s theory (see Reisenzein, 2017), an emotion (e.g., joy) occurs if the person feels aroused, appraises an event as concern-relevant in a particular way, that is specific for this emotion (e.g., as a wish fulfillment in the case of joy), and believes that her arousal was caused by her appraisal of the event. Furthermore, although Schachter himself did not emphasize this point, the attribution of the arousal to the appraisal presumably provides the emotion with an object (see Shaked & Clore, 2017).

As a matter of fact, Schachter and Singer’s (1962) cognition-arousal theory was not entirely new: It had already been proposed in similar form, and motivated by similar considerations, by several previous authors, including Duffy (1941), Marañon (1924), and B. Russell (1927/1960). Even earlier, Höffding (1914) had proposed a rather similar attributional cognition-feeling theory, although with bodily arousal replaced by the traditional pair of affective feelings, pleasure–displeasure.¹ And the more general idea of cognition-arousal theory, that at least a subgroup of the emotions distinguished in common-sense are cognition-based feelings, or perhaps complexes or fusions of cognitions and feelings, can be found in many classic emotion theories, including those of Descartes (1649/1984), Hume (1739/1978; see also Collier, 2011), and Meinong (1894). Ultimately, cognition-feeling theory can be traced to Aristotle (350 BC/1980).

What distinguished Schachter and Singer’s (1962) version of cognition-arousal theory from its predecessors, however, was that the theory was presented together with an experimental test (Schachter & Singer, 1962) that, at least in the authors’ view, yielded results that supported the theory. In addition, Schachter and coworkers could claim support for the theory from several additional studies (e.g., Nisbett & Schachter, 1966; Schachter & Wheeler, 1962; see also Schachter, 1964). Beyond this empirical support, cognition-arousal theory was also well received in several research fields because it fit the current developments in these fields. In particular, the theory fit well into the developing attribution research program of social psychology (see Reisenzein & Rudolph, 2008), into which it was in fact quickly incorporated (e.g., Jones et al., 1971; Nisbett & Schachter, 1966). The theory was also welcomed by proponents of the emerging social constructionist movement in sociology and psychology (see e.g., Armon-Jones, 1986; Shott, 1979): If, as Schachter proposed, emotions are partly defined in terms of cognitions, and if (as some of Schachter’s remarks could be taken to imply) the cognitions in question are socially constructed, the conclusion seemed justified that emotions, too, are sociocultural products.

For the 20 years following its publication, cognition-arousal theory became the most influential emotion theory in social psychology, if not in psychology at large. During this time, a flood of empirical studies were published in which the experimental paradigms developed by Schachter and coworkers in their foundational studies (in particular, Nisbett & Schachter, 1966; Schachter & Singer, 1962) were applied to diverse emotions and emotion-like experiences (for reviews see e.g., Leventhal & Tomarken, 1986; Reisenzein, 1983). In addition, cognition-arousal theory became a source of inspiration for theorizing. In particular, the assumption contained in the theory that people look for the causes of their feelings and that the explanations found have important psychological implications, was quickly transferred from arousal to other “internal states” (Bem, 1972), including positive and negative moods, specific emotions, feelings of effort, feelings of familiarity (for reviews, see e.g., Schwarz & Clore, 2007; Shaked & Clore, 2017), and salient thought contents (see e.g., Loersch & Payne, 2011).

Although Schachter’s (1964) theory of emotion has thus been an important stimulant to theory and research, the theory itself has lost its once dominant position in emotion psychology. There are several reasons for this. First, a number of reviews of the evidence for major predictions derived from the theory published in the 1980s came to skeptical conclusions (e.g., Leventhal & Tomarken, 1986; Reisenzein, 1983), as did later updates (e.g., Parkinson, 1995). Second and perhaps even more important, as a comprehensive theory of emotion (as opposed to a local hypothesis about the nature of emotional experience), Schachter’s theory was at best a sketch: The arousal-eliciting appraisal process implied by the theory was not explicated; the question of precisely how emotional experiences relate to subsequent thoughts, actions, and expressive behaviors was essentially left unanswered; nothing was said about the possible evolutionary origins and functions of emotions or about individual emotions, etcetera. In the past 30 years, the interest of the majority of emotion researchers has shifted to these questions. Third, related to this shift of interest, competing theories of emotion—in particular basic emotions theory (e.g., Ekman, 1992) and some versions of appraisal theory close to it—gained popularity.

However, even though Schachter’s cognition-arousal theory has lost its once dominant place in emotion psychology, the central question addressed by the theory—the nature of emotional experience—still awaits a generally accepted answer. And although cognition-arousal theory’s answer to this question may not have been entirely right, the more general (and as documented before, much older) idea contained in this answer continues to hold intuitive force. This is the idea that the definition of emotions requires reference to both cognitions and to a sensation-like feeling component that explains the phenomenal quality of emotions and their intensity. This idea lives on in several contemporary theories of emotional experience, some of which are described in the contributions to this special section.

The Articles

The articles begin with a historical and microsociological study by Dror (2017), who traces the origin of Schachter’s theory to Schachter’s earlier work on the psychology of affiliation (Schachter, 1959). A main conclusion of Dror is that although Schachter and Singer (1962) positioned cognition-arousal theory into the historical context of the James–Cannon debate, the theory was in fact not the result of Schachter’s engagement with this debate, but of his attempt to apply Festinger’s (1954) social comparison theory—one of the underpinnings of Schachter’s affiliation studies (Schachter, 1959)—to emotions. Indeed, this thesis provides a plausible explanation for the somewhat circumstantial manipulation of cognitive appraisal in the Schachter and Singer (1962) experiment.

A difficulty that confronts students of Schachter’s theory is the vague and ambiguous formulation of the theory, which has led to several different, partly incompatible interpretations. In addition, still other versions of cognition-arousal theory have been independently proposed. In the second article (Reisenzein, 2017), I attempt to give a systematic overview of the existing varieties of cognition-arousal theory. The theories are classified according to two main criteria: what condition is regarded as necessary for emotions in addition to the presence of an emotion-specific appraisal and a feeling of arousal; and what the emotion itself is assumed to be—an appraisal-caused state of arousal, a complex mental state comprising both appraisal and arousal, or a novel mental state resulting from the fusion of cognition and arousal. In the second part of the article, I argue in favor of a modified cognition-feeling theory, according to which emotions are intrinsically affective “mental” feelings (e.g., feelings of pleasure and displeasure) that are (objectively) caused by appraisals. Apart from the important difference that arousal is replaced by mental feelings, this proposal corresponds to one of the existing versions—the objectivist causal-functional version—of cognition-arousal theory (Gordon, 1978).

Another cognition-feeling theory is proposed by Shaked and Clore (2017). In accord with J. A. Russell (2003), Barrett (2006), and MacCormack and Lindquist (2017), Shaked and Clore propose that the feeling component of emotions is core affect, a combination of pleasure–displeasure and activation–deactivation. Episodes of core affect are typically caused by appraisals of events, and the quality of the experienced emotion (beyond core affect), as well as the emotion’s object (or at least its apparent object; see Shargel, 2017) depend on the appraisal to which core affect is attributed. The main part of the article is devoted to an investigation of the principles that govern this attribution process. Finally, Shaked and Clore (2017) propose that a unified emotional experience emerges if an experienced appraisal-affect pattern (e.g., displeasure attributed to an undesired outcome) is represented in multiple modalities (cognitive, expressive, physiological, motivational). This theory can be regarded as an elaboration of a “core affect” version of the part-whole interpretation of cognition-arousal theory (Reisenzein, 2017).

A third version of cognition-feeling theory is proposed by MacCormack and Lindquist (2017; for a closely related formulation, see Barrett, 2006). In this theory, too, the feeling component of emotions is core affect, and the quality differences between emotions are mainly due to cognitions. However, different from Shaked and Clore (2017), MacCormack and Lindquist (2017) assume that the changes in core affect that eventually result in emotions are sometimes elicited by causes other than appraisals (e.g., hormonal fluctuations, immune responses), and that the experience of a specific emotion (e.g., joy) emerges if an episode of core affect is categorized in terms of an emotion concept. In other words, specific emotions are conceptually refined experiences of core affect. This cognition-feeling theory can be regarded as a “core-affect” version of a third variant of cognition-arousal theory, categorization theory (see Reisenzein, 2017).

The last two articles, by Shargel (2017) and Deonna and Teroni (2017), critically reexamine two assumptions of cognition-arousal theory. Shargel (2017) reconsiders the assumption, made in some but not all versions of cognition-arousal theory (see Reisenzein, 2017), as well as in some versions of appraisal theory (e.g., Scherer, 2009), that appraisals are not causes but components of emotions. It has been argued that this assumption is required to explain the quality distinctions between emotions and the object-directedness of emotions (see e.g., Shaked & Clore, 2017), but these arguments have been criticized (see e.g., Deonna & Teroni, 2017; Reisenzein, 2017). The question therefore arises whether there are other reasons for regarding appraisals as emotion components. Drawing on Scherer’s (2009) component-process model of emotion, Shargel (2017) proposes that appraisals could be legitimately regarded as parts of emotions if, as this theory assumes, they are synchronized with other emotion components (bodily changes, action tendencies, etc.) during the emotion generation process. Even then, however, Shargel argues, emotions do not inherit the specific intentional objects of appraisals, because the appraisals that are components of emotion are generic rather than object-specific.

In the last article, Deonna and Teroni (2017) reexamine the justification for the move from James’s (1890/1950) bodily feeling theory to cognition-arousal theory. They do so by discussing what they regard as arguably the most important objections by philosophers and psychologists against James’s theory of emotion. The arguments are systematized into a group of objections to the assumption that bodily feelings are sufficiently emotion-specific to be plausible candidates for a theoretical identification with emotions; and another group aimed at showing that even assuming the existence of emotion-specific bodily feelings, emotions still cannot be identified with them. Deonna and Teroni (2017) argue that ultimately none of these arguments is fully convincing and that a revamped version of bodily feeling theory—according to which emotions are feelings of the readiness of one’s body to react in appropriate ways to situations appraised as concern-relevant—may, after all, still be a viable option.

The question of the nature of emotional experience—the question that mainly occupied James and Schachter——will surely stay with us for some time to come. However, chances are good, I believe, that the final answer to this question will be some version of cognition-feeling theory.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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