Schachter and Singer’s theory of emotion: what does it consist of?

In 1962, in the magazine Psychological Review An article was published that would generate a small earthquake in the psychology of the time. It presented a cognitive approach to explaining emotions. Its authors were Stanley Schachter (1922-1997) and Jerome Singer (1934-2010), American social psychologists. His contributions and research have inspired different currents of psychological thought, giving way, among others, to Schachter and Singer’s theory of emotion.

Schachter and Singer’s theory of emotion brought several issues to the table:

A new understanding and a new explanation of how emotions work. The nature of emotions themselves. Are they something merely physical-chemical? Can the ideas we have about a situation lead to another type of emotional experience?

These represent the types of questions we can ask ourselves after reading the work of these two psychologists. Through an experiment carried out in 1962, they wanted to demonstrate what they called two-factor emotional theory.. It was called that because it referred to two explanatory factors: biological and cognitive.

Schachter and Singer’s theory of emotion made an experiment

According to Schachter and Singer’s theory, emotions are the result of both physiological and cognitive processes. To do this, they tried to find out whether study participants would respond differently to an adrenaline injection depending on the context in which they were found.

They all received an injection of epinephrine, although they were told it was a vitamin or a placebo – this part of the experiment was ethically questioned. While some participants were informed about possible side effects, others were told there would be no side effects; Additionally, there was another group that was informed of incorrect side effects, such as itching or headache.

They expected that those who felt an effect and knew why would easily attribute the cause to the injection. However, the pair of researchers expected that participants who were not informed about the effects of epinephrine (or who received incorrect information) would look to the environment for an explanation of their subjective condition.

Participants were then placed in one of two environments. The first was designed to induce feelings of euphoria in participants. They interacted with an accomplice (a person who is part of the research team but passes as a participant), who behaved in a jovial and cheerful manner. The second environment of the study was made to induce feelings of anger. Here the participants (including the confederate) were asked to fill out questionnaires containing increasingly personal questions.

Experiment results

The behavior of the first infiltrator attempted to inoculate an atmosphere of joy. He was throwing a paper airplane, pretending to play basketball with the trash can in the room. He also played with hula hoops. In the case of the second accomplice, in charge of the emotions of anger, he seemed irritated by the invasiveness of the questions, tore up the form and left the room quite angry.

The idea, in general terms, is simple: Those who do not know what to attribute their state of physiological excitement to will look for the answer in the environment that surrounds them. That is to say, what we commonly understand as emotion is not only its physiological or chemical aspect. Emotions can vary in intensity according to the cognitive interpretation made of the situation that triggers an emotion.

Then it is not just the stimulus, but the perception-cognition of the stimulus in its context, or its cognitive representation that would constitute the first state in the genesis of the emotion. In this way, those who did not know what to expect from the effects of the drug would assume that it was the social environment that made them feel that way.

Thus, in general terms, the hypothesis of Schachter and Singer’s theory could be confirmed. And this is the case, since, for example, the subjects informed of the effects of the injection were not induced to feel particularly sad or happy. They simply attributed their physiological reaction to the injection.

Instead, People who were not informed of the effects of adrenaline also experienced physiological arousal. However, they did not attribute such sensations to the injection. They focused the explanation of their emotions on the infiltrator’s behavior.

A way to go…

Schachter and Singer’s theory of emotion opened a field to understand emotions in a more global way. It is also true that there are radically opposite positions, while others that collect the good and review what needs to be improved.

Although in the end the results could not be replicated in exactly the same way, their contributions opened a whole discussion around the cognitive capacity of human beings to interpret what we thought was far from hermeneutics: emotions.

This theory is just one of many theories about emotions that exist . Schachter and Singer opened an entire field of research, a proposal on the nature of emotions and inspired millions of researchers passionate about the primary topic of emotions: human life. per se and what happens to us beyond body chemistry.

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