by Sana Fatima

Created on: July 15, 2009

The James-Lange theory of emotion, by psychologists William James and Carl Lange, proposes that emotions occur as a result of physiological reactions to events. According to James, 'Common-sense say we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not immediately induced by the other, that the bodily manifestations must first be interposed between, and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful as the case may be.'

This theory states that an external stimulus is one that leads to a physiological reaction. Our emotional reaction is dependent upon how we interpret those physical reactions. Within human beings, as a response to experiences in the world, the autonomic nervous system creates physiological events such as muscular tension, a rise in heart rate, perspiration, and dryness of the mouth. Emotions, then, are feelings which come about as a result of these physiological changes, rather than being their cause. We feel emotions because we sense the change in our bodies. Thus, the physiological responses by our bodies to various situations are interpreted by our bodies and then our minds, based upon those responses, construe the emotion that we should be feeling.

Following the perception of the emotion-eliciting event by the sensory portions of the cerebral cortex, motor and somatic responses are produced by stimulation of the appropriate output areas and descending projections, partly based on learned associations, as well as innate dispositions. Then it is the perception of the feedback from these responses, at the cortical level, that forms the raw substrate of emotional experience.According to Darwin, motor behaviour like facial expression and postures, conveys one's response toward events and objects in the environment. This reinforces the observation that emotion-specific motor behaviour is accompanied by subjective experience, i.e., emotional feeling, and that the inhibition of motor behaviour interferes with emotion processing .This indicates that sensorimotor function seems to be involved in constituting emotional feeling and emotions.

The James-Lange theory of emotions runs contrary to everyday notion

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