The Schachter theory of emotion: Two decades later.

TLDR

Schachter's cognition‑arousal theory of emotion is critically examined from both a conceptual and an empirical point of view. Several of the theory's less clearly defined aspects are clarified, and empirical evidence pertaining to three major deductions from the theory is reviewed. Only the deduction that misattributed arousal from an extraneous source intensifies emotional reactions is adequately supported, while evidence for arousal reduction, misattribution to neutral sources, and arousal as a necessary condition is weak or equivocal, leading the authors to conclude that arousal’s role in emotion is overstated and best described as an attenuated, attribution‑mediated intensifying effect.

Abstract

Schachter's cognition-arousal theory of emotion is critically examined from both a conceptual and an empirical point of view. Several of the theory's less clearly defined aspects are clarified, and empirical evidence pertaining to three major deductions from the theory is reviewed. It is concluded that only one of these deductions, claiming that misattributed arousal from an extraneous source intensifies emotional reactions, can be considered adequately supported by the data. Little support is found for the second hypothesis, that arousal reduction leads to a reduction in the intensity of emotional state, and the status of the third hypothesis, that misattribution of emotionally induced arousal to a neutral source results in a reduction of emotionality, is considered equivocal because of plausible alternative interpretations of the pertinent findings. Furthermore, it is concluded that there is no convincing evidence for Schachter's claim that arousal is a necessary condition for an emotional state, nor for the suggestion that emotional states may result from a labeling of unexplained arousal. It is suggested that the role of arousal in emotion has been overstated and that the available data support at best a rather attenuated version of Schachter's theory—that is, that arousal feedback can have an intensifying effect on emotional states—and that this arousal-emotion relationship is mediated, in part, by causal attributions regarding the source of arousal.