Arousal & emotions: How are emotions created?
Disclaimer: Learn Psychology with me! As a psychology student, I have the opportunity and blessing of diving into some interesting topics of psychology. My study technique involves actively recalling everything I remember! So, I created this blog post (at least the first draft of it) without looking at any textbooks, articles, or notes. This particular topic belongs to Social Psychology and is based on evidence and studies!
Have you ever wondered how come we feel what we feel? Like, where do our emotions come from? Are they a body thing, a brain thing, or possibly both? Sometimes we misunderstand our bodies to the extent where we might even define our emotions wrongly. Psychologists have been looking into the area of emotions and how physiological arousal might be affecting them. And, in this article, we’ll examine the relationship between arousal and emotions.
First things first, in order for us to be on the same page we need to clarify what we mean by arousal and emotions.
Arousal is the physiological excitement or alertness of your body. The way we will be using this term here is not sexual, but rather a description of our physiologically heightened state. Signs of arousal are high blood pressure, rapid heart rate, deep breathing, etc.
Emotions on the other hand are more of a cognitive interpretation of what we feel. It’s the labeling and understanding of our physiological arousal. Anger, sadness, excitement, fear, and enjoyment are all examples of emotions.
How are arousal & emotions connected?
Some theories suggest that emotions are basically the product of arousal. Researchers such as James & Lange, Cannon & Bard, and Schachter & Singer, all used and built on each other’s theories (which we will outline further in the blog) to create a general idea of how arousal and emotions are connected.
And it looks something like this:
The stimulus is the activity or event that happens which then triggers the physiological change in your body. It can be exercising, seeing a scary movie, or climbing a steep cliff.
This physiological change in turn happens as a response to that trigger — your body reacts to what’s happening and then your brain is like ‘woaaah, something’s different here’. And that way, you interpret the change in your body in regard to the stimulus in your environment. This cognitive understanding becomes the emotion you feel — or the emotional response.
Is our brain always accurate when interpreting emotion?
What if our brains get it wrong sometimes? Or what if we are exposed to more than one stimulus — one after the other? Which emotion are we feeling then? What if we misinterpret fear with attraction?
Some theories attempt to answer these questions.
Excitation Transfer theory by Zillman.
This theory suggests that when we become aroused because of trigger A, we might carry some of that excitation for some time. This is known as residual arousal. And if we happen to be exposed to a second trigger, we are sometimes likely to give ‘all the credits’ for our arousal to trigger B.
This can happen when we are scared and then see someone we like. Fear, in that case, makes our heart pound and our palms sweat. But once we see the person we are attracted to, we carry our arousal onto them. Thus this causes two things: 1. we feel even more attracted to them because of the residual effect of arousal. And 2. we might even bypass the event that created the fear, and only see the person standing opposite us — transferring all physiological change to sexual attraction.
Misattribution of emotion by Singer & Schachter.
Attribution is placing ‘responsibility’ on something as the cause of something else. Misattribution is basically the opposite of attributing correctly. Thus, when you misattribute, you place responsibility for something on the wrong ‘thing’ or ‘person’.
Arron & Dutton tested this with the popular experiment on the Capilano bridge.
The experiment in a nutshell:
- Two bridges, one tall one, hanging over a scary drop, very narrow and kinda wobbly.
- The other, is not so tall, very wide, and very very steady.
- A woman — described as attractive — approached young, unattended men that walked on each bridge.
- She asked them to participate in an experiment — she gave them a picture of a woman and asked them to create a dramatic story [TAT (thematic appreciation test)]
- And then, the woman gave them her phone number and told them to call her if they wanted to learn further details about the experiment.
*TAT (Thematic Appreciation Test)
What do you think happened?
The results showed that the men on the high scary bridge, created 1. more sexual stories in the TAT, and 2. much more of them called the woman after the experiment, than the guys on the lower bridge.
According to previous knowledge, we know that our brain has to understand the change in our body in order to feel the emotion.
During this ‘understanding process,’ our head considers the stimuli and comes up with a relevant explanation for the physiological change which in turn creates an emotional response. Sometimes though, our brain misattributes our arousal. In other words, it fails to pinpoint the real stimulus which triggered the arousal and therefore labels the emotional response differently.
In this case, the men on the high bridge were possibly aroused due to the fact that they were walking 230 ft on a wobbly bridge, over a river. But when they saw the beautiful lady, they thought this change in their body (arousal) happened because of her. They misattributed the source of their arousal, and this resulted in them being more attracted to her, and thus more likely to call her later.
In addition, in the TAT, men on the high bridge created more sexual stories than men on the lower one. This shows us that arousal might have affected their sexual emotions as a whole and thus triggered their imagination to be more sexual.
Distinguishing these two theories: Excitation transfer happens as a later response. Whereas misattribution of emotion happens at the moment.
Other interesting theories on emotions and arousal:
One other theory suggests that when we feel aroused but are unsure of what caused our arousal, we turn to other people for clarity. This is so interesting because it shows the significant effect of other people on what we feel. It’s like you are turning to someone else to define your emotions or even your behavior.
This was shown in experiments where 3 groups of x subjects were given the drug epinephrine — which causes physiological excitement. Group 1 was informed they were given the drug. Group 2 didn’t know they were given epinephrine. And they gave a placebo to group 3.
They were then put in a room with a confederate. [A confederate is someone who is ‘part of the play’ of an experiment.]
The confederates in all 3 cases, were either acting angry or very happy and carefree.
And guess what happened.
The subjects who didn’t know they were given epinephrine, sort of mimicked the confederate’s behavior. Meaning, that if the confederate was happy, they also acted happily, and when the confederate was angry, they also showed anger.
However, the people who knew they were given epinephrine, associated their arousal to the drug, and were not affected by the confederate’s behavior to that extent.
This shows us that when people don’t really know why the physicological change happens, or don’t know how to react, they turn to someone around them who is exposed to the same stimulus in order to interpret their emotions.
In addition, something I find extremely cool is that physiological arousal heightens all other emotions as well. For example, if you just exercised, and you see your dog, you are probably going to feel even happier than you would if your body wasn’t in the aroused state — caused by exercising.
*Theories of emotion in a nutshell:
James & Lang (chronologically 1st theory)
Stimulus — physiological change (arousal) — awareness (just identifying the change in your body [i.e. I’m shaking’]) — emotional response
Cannon & Bard (chronologically 2nd-second theory)
Stimulus — Brain activity — physiological change (arousal) + emotional response [occur at the same time]
Singer & Schatcher (most recent theory — and most used)
Stimulus — physiological change (arousal) — cognitive interpretation — emotional response
Conclusion
It’s fascinating to understand how our physiology and brain create our emotions, and how we label them wrongly sometimes.
And to be fair, when we learn more about how our body and mind work to create both emotions and thoughts, we become more aware altogether. And awareness is one of the best ways to bring more peace into your life, and more joy to your days. Why?
Well, for one thing, when you become aware of and learn these types of processes, you start realizing that almost nothing you feel and think is in your control. And the only thing you can really control is how you let your emotions and thoughts affect you, and which ones you choose to focus on.
And thus, you let go of the illusion of control, and possibly sit back and just watch the emotions unfold as they do. It can be pretty entertaining sometimes!
