Two things happen when you have an emotion :
1. You experience certain physical sensations.
2. You label these sensations in terms of your environment. (This includes your internal environment, too, such as a memory or althought. Often we blush and feel happy just remembering a time when we were with someone we love).
In a fascinating 1962 study, psychologists Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer set out to explore the way external events can influence a person`s emotions. They decided to induce an emotionlike physical state in their subjects and then see if they could induce the mental part of the emotion too. The first step was to inject the subjects with a drug called epinephrine, which would cause their hearts to beat a little faster and their breathing rates to increase-the same physical changes that often occur when we have emotions in real life.
Next they put the subjects in a situations that might give them some cues to interpreting the emotional significance of their pounding hearts and fast breathing. The researchers sent a confederate into the room where the subjects were waiting. The subjects thought this person was another experimental subject, but he was actually assisting the researchers. The confederate was instructed to behave in a way that might lend an emotional flavor to the proceedings. He cracked jokes, made paper airplanes, clowned around with a Hula Hoop, and did everything else he could to make everyone in the room feel silly, happy, and euphoric. The subjects actually did feel an emotion: Not only did they feel their hearts pounding, they actually felt cheerful and euphoric. Schachter and Singer had proved their point : If you can induce an emotionlike physical sensation in a person and set up an environmental framework or series of cues, you can induce the person to have a specific emotion.
Next they put the subjects in a situations that might give them some cues to interpreting the emotional significance of their pounding hearts and fast breathing. The researchers sent a confederate into the room where the subjects were waiting. The subjects thought this person was another experimental subject, but he was actually assisting the researchers. The confederate was instructed to behave in a way that might lend an emotional flavor to the proceedings. He cracked jokes, made paper airplanes, clowned around with a Hula Hoop, and did everything else he could to make everyone in the room feel silly, happy, and euphoric. The subjects actually did feel an emotion: Not only did they feel their hearts pounding, they actually felt cheerful and euphoric. Schachter and Singer had proved their point : If you can induce an emotionlike physical sensation in a person and set up an environmental framework or series of cues, you can induce the person to have a specific emotion.
References :
Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer, “Cognitive, Social and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State”, Psychological Review 69, No.5, September, 1962.
Marvin R Levy, Mark Dignan, Janet H Shirreffs, Essentials of Life & Health, Fourth Edition, Random House, New York, 1984.
