Emotional Arousal Theory

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Emotional Arousal is defined as the arousal of strong emotions and emotions behavior. It is a physiological state that is entered during anytime of arousal, whether it be negative or positive. Arousal is a heightened sensation in our body and mind to make us more alert. Becoming aroused can come from stimulation which is more commonly found as emotions such as fear and anxiety or sexual and relaxation. Arousal starts in the brain, where the Reticular Activation system connects the primitive brain stem and the cortex and affects sleeping-waking transitions.
Throughout history there have been many theories on how this state of mind occurs and why it occurs. In the late 1800s, psychologist William James and psychologist Carl Lange developed a …show more content…

The Cannon-Bard theory states that we feel emotions and experience physiological reactions such as sweating and trembling simultaneously. In other words, they proposed that an emotion-triggering stimulus and the body’s arousal take place at the same time. For example, if you see a snake or spider, you are afraid and you begin to tremble. According to the Cannon-Bard theory, we react to stimulus and experience the associated emotion at the same …show more content…

Schachter and Singer suggest that the two-factor theory focuses on the interaction between physical arousal and how we label the specific arousal. Just feeling the arousal in a sense is not enough, we also have to identify the arousal in order to feel the emotion. Schachter and Singer suggested that there was such a wide variety of emotions, so the physics arousal by itself couldn’t be responsible for the emotional response. For example, according to the two-factor theory, the sequence would go along the lines of 1. I see a strange man walking toward me. 2. My heart is racing and I am trembling. 3. My rapid heart rate and trembling are caused by fear. 4. I am frightened. The process begins with the stimulus and is followed by the physical arousal which leads to the cognitive label of what is happening. The wide variety of emotions and how they take place affect the body in ways we feel is natural. For example, our fight or flight reaction is also caused by this two-factor

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