Question

Explain in your own words the James-Lange theory of emotion. [10%]

Answer 1

Basically this theory was developed by William James and Carl Lange and hence the name James-Lange theory of evolution. This is one of the earliest proposed theory of emotions. This deals with the nature of emotions that is associated with the physiological arousal (i.e physiological changes) which is caused by external stimuli.

Emotions is considered as a person's strong feeling of conscious reaction to a specific object that is accompanied by behavioral and physiological changes in person's body. In simple terms, whenever there is any physiological change occuring in body, it comes out as emotions. James's idea was that emotions are consequence i.e effect of physiological change whereas Lange's ideaa focused more on the manifestation i.e the action of physiological change.

There is some sort of feeling of emotion when sensory information is passed on to brain i.e sense of touch, or smell, or taste, or vision that allows us to respond to that sensation, this respond could be increased heart rate, increased breathing, or increased sweating, changes in blood pressure or changes in pupillary contractions. We all know this. But in addition to this, James and Lange believed that before we respond to this senses, our body starts responding to the external stimuli i.e the physiological change ( increased heart rate, increased breathing, or increased sweating, changes in blood pressure or changes in pupillary contractions) even before this. In other words, before we respond to senses, our brain responds to external stimuli, which means our emotions are based on physiological change.

Whenever there is external stimuli from the enviornment, our cortex of the brain receive these signals, which inturn triggers our visceral organ and skeletal muscles and we experience the feeling of emotion (external enviornment triggered our emotions to happen).

Eg-we feel happy, sometimes sad, sometimes lonely, sometimes excited, all these emotions are the response to external stimulus i.e any situation or enviornment surrounding us causes these emotions to occur.

Exactly what causes these changes in our body is not known and this is considered the limitation of James and Lange theory.

Thus, according to James and Lange theory, physiological responses (physiological change) occurs first and play a vital role in feeling of emotion.