Schachter Singer 1962 Cognitive social and physiological determinants

Schachter & Singer (1962) Cognitive, social and physiological determinants of emotional state October 2012 1

Is emotion cognitive, physiological or behavioural?

How do you feel? Subjective experience Physiological changes Associated behaviour Components of emotion: 1. Mental/cognitive/subjective experiences 2. Physiological/physical/endocrine/neural changes 3. Associated behaviour How much control do you have over these? None? Some? Total? 3

Features of emotion 1. Cognitive appraisal of the situation: the emotional response appears when we signify events as relevant to our goals. 2. Body’s external reaction 3. Overt behaviour 4. Facial expressions *None of these is a necessary condition for emotional experience.

How do I feel? Which cues, internal or external, permit a person to label and identify his own emotional state? We usually would consider: Mental/Physical states Environment 5

What is ‘emotion’ exactly? Possible alternative views: Emotion without cognitive appraisal Emotion without physiological arousal Conventional view: Two-factor theory (Schachter) – cognitive and physiological are necessary and sufficient. Neither on its own is sufficient. (aka cognitive labelling theory) 6

Aim and Nature Aim: “To test, experimentally, 3 propositions regarding the interaction between physiological and cognitive factors in the experience of emotion” 7

Hypothesis There were 3 hypotheses tested: 1. If an individual experiences physiological arousal with no inmediate explanation he will label the state and describe it in terms of the cognitions available. * Same state could receive different labels depending on the cognitive aspects of the situation.

Hypothesis 2. If an individual experiences physiological arousal for which he/she has a completely appropriate explanation, he/she will label this state accordingly. i. e. “My grandmother passed away / I had an injection”.

Hypothesis 3. Given the same circumstances, an individual will react emotionally, or describe his/her feelings as emotions, only if he/she has physiological arousal ie. Arousal is necessary for emotion to be experienced a such.

METHOD/ DESIGN 184 pp – male 1 st year university(of Minnesota) Ψ students 3 IVs: Physiological arousal Cognitive explanations Emotion-inducing situations DV: 11 Emotions – self-feedback & observations

Procedure Fake aim: “Study of the effects of vitamin compounds (Suproxin) on vision” “Would you mind having an injection of Suproxin (made up name) to look at the effects of vitamins on vision? ” (1 pp of 185 declined) “Suproxin” was actually adrenaline (injection called epinephrine in US) OR a placebo 12

What does adrenaline do? Causes similar effects to the arousal of the autonomic nervous system (ANS – “fight or flight”). Starts after 3 -5 mins, lasts 15 -30 mins. Increases blood pressure Increases heart rate Increases blood sugar Increases respiration Increases blood flow to muscles & brain Decreases blood flow to skin (feels cold) Palpitations Tremors Flushing 13

Video http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=Ry. P 8 L 3 q. TW 9 Q&feature=related

Procedure 1 st IV: Physiological arousal 4 experimental conditions: Epinephrine ignorant experimenter said nothing about side effects Epinephrine informed participant was told about actual side effects, reinforced by the doctor who gave injection. Epinephrine misinformed some patients experience numb feet, itching, headache (doctor confirmed) Placebo: saline solution. Told nothing. What would you expect in each condition, in terms of 15 physiological arousal and appropriate explanations?

Procedure / Expectations 2 nd IV: The extent to which participants had an appropriate* explanation of their bodily state. Epi Ign – physio. arousal without explanation, only current situation Epi Inf – physio. arousal with explanation Epi Mis – physio. arousal with inappropriate explanation Placebo – no physio. arousal, cognitions (thoughts) are the only influence. 16 * Appropriate: they knew precisely what they would feel and why.

Procedure / Two-factor theory 142 -143 http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=Rm. J 6 ww. KMNHM&feature=related Social and cognitive influences 17

Procedure 143 3 rd IV: Situations from which explanatory cognitions could be derived. a) Euphoria after the injection, the doctor left the room and the experimenter returned with stooge (introduced as another participant) “Both of you had Suproxin. Wait for 20 minutes till vision test. ” Stooge: basketball game, hula hoop, paper planes) 18

b) Anger: The same as euphoria but they were asked to wait for 20 minutes answering a questionnaire. Stooge: Complaining about injections, unfair. The questionnaire was increasingly personal and insulting. Stooge got increasingly angry with comments, ripped the paper and left the room.

In summary… 7 conditions CONDITION AROUSAL COGNITIVE EXPLANATION EMOTION INDUCING Epi. Ignorant Yes None Euphoria Anger Epi. Informed Yes Correct Euphoria Anger Epi. Misinformed Yes Incorrect (suggestion) Euphoria Placebo No No Euphoria Anger *Random allocation of participants. What type of experimental design is this?

(Evaluation point) Why no “Epi Mis / Anger” condition? “This was originally conceived as a control condition and it was felt that its inclusion in the Euphoria condition alone woul be enough. ” 21

Procedure 143 DV: Emotional response Measured in two ways: 1. Researcher’s standardised observations one way mirror. (Did the P join the stooge in the euphoric games/agree with the angry stooge? ) 2. Self-report questionnaires: scores. (ie. How angry/irritated were you? ) 22

RESULTS What do you think that happened?

1. Effects of the injections on bodily state All participants who received injections reported higher levels of arousal than the placebo ones. 24

2. Effects on the manipulations of emotional states Mean self ratings and observed behaviour in order from higher to lower: Euphoria Condition Mean Epi Ignorant Significantly higher than Epi inf Epi Misinformed Significantly higher than Epi inf Placebo Less than Epi Informed but higher than

Results Anger Condition Mean Epi Ignorant Little but more than Epi Informed Little Placebo Little Epi Misinformed Little Participants were probably afraid to admit irritation to the experimenter’s face.

Result ‘problems’ All results non-significant Placebo group: Assumed “placebo = no arousal” BUT any injection is a dramatic event Some Mis & Ign also linked injection to arousal (design: to exp arousal w/o obvious cause!? !) 27

Conclusions For anger and euphoria: Epi mis and Epi Ign were higher than Epi informed in line with predictions. Placebo results were ambiguous • Impossible to evaluate unambiguously the effects of physiological arousal. • For both emotions placebo showed sign for sympathetic arousal and then more anger • *Sympathetic arousal accompanies an increase in emotional level. • Both sympathetic arousal and appropriate cognition are necessary for the experience of emotion

Methodological issues Schachter & Singer know that the “placebo” results are troublesome. Even though the epi ign groups weren’t told an explanation, they were given an injection anyway! An injection is, in itself, an arousing situation anxiety Epi mis and Epi ign could anyway attribute their state to the injection reduce influence of stooge

Methodological issues They removed the info from participants “self-informed” with no emotion “experimental artefacts”. Then, differences became significant. A lot more for ignorants than placebo So, the experiment on its own does not support the hypotheses (especially hyp. 1)

Methodological issues Aditional problems (Hildegard et al) a) Epinephrine does not affect everyone in the same way b) No assessment was made of participant’s mood before the injection. c) How comparable arousal states caused by drugs v/s real life emotions?

Theoretical issues Cognitive labelling theory (Schachter & Singer): Assumes that the physiological arousal associated to different emotional states is esentially the same controversial Do we physically feel the same when we are angry, stressed, sad, happy or amazed?

Theoretical issues There were different theories according to this: James-Lange theory (1890): "the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion" • Physiological arousal is sufficient for emotional experience. i. e. we’re afraid because we run; we’re angry because we hit

Theoretical issues Cannon-Bard theory (1929): the opposite “The same visceral changes occur in every different emotional states. ” Levenson (1994): It’s a myth that every emotion is autonimically (physiologically) different. Some emotions (behaviourally similar) share some features. We cannot draw conclusions about the specificity of bodily response. Pinel (1993): Intermediate position between common response and totally different response.

Theoretical issues Dalgleish (1998): there is good evidence to support James-Lange. Physiological arousal is only necessary and not sufficient. Emotional experience is affected by how arousal is interpreted. In this experiment, participants weren’t aware of the source of emotion. In real life, usually we are. Even here we need cognitive analysis. Schachter & Singer: the quantitative aspect doesn’t require cognitive analysis, but the qualitative, does.

Subsequent research Are environmental cues easily accepted as to infererence with our feelings as Schachter said? Several studies concluded …understanding the unexplained arousal is more complex than just intaking cues from the inmediate environment. We often think of past experiences in which we felt like this doesn’t show why we feel like this.

Subsequent research Arousal is more likely to be interpreted negatively anxiety. Not easy to label one or other emotion. Real impact of the adrenaline experiment: Revived the old idea that emotions might be cognitive interpretations of situations.

Subsequent research Missing from cognitive labelling theory: what caused the emotion in the first place? Cognitive appraisal theorists: highlight the importance of cognitive appraisal! Appraisal: evaluation of the potential harm/benefit of a situation.

Applications and implications Insufficient evidence for: every emotion has distinct ANS activity Insufficient evidence for: ANS responds identically to all emotional stimuli Cognitive labelling theory: physiological arousal is necessary but not sufficient A cognitive appraisal of a situation is necessary 39

Applications and implications Attributions of emotions are malleable Clinical application: anxiety disorders. Reattribute anxiety arousal to less threatening sources (e. g. from ‘hostile world’ to ‘just my heart racing’) The misattribution paradigm / reattribution treatment 40

Some videos… http: //www. youtube. com/watch? feature=endscree n&v=G 974 ch. Dqp. QQ&NR=1 http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=BLiv 0 DBod. Tk