Psychology Assignment: James-Lange Theory, Stress, and Emotion

The essay explores the James-Lange theory of emotion, which posits that emotions arise from our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli. The essay begins by defining the theory and explaining its core concepts, emphasizing that bodily arousal precedes the subjective experience of emotion. It contrasts the James-Lange theory with other theories, such as the Cannon-Bard and Schachter-Singer theories, which offer alternative explanations for the relationship between physiological responses and emotions. The essay also discusses the connection between stress and negative emotions, referencing a study that investigates the impact of stress on negative emotions and the mediating role of rumination. The study's findings highlight how increased stress can lead to higher levels of negative emotions, and how rumination can amplify this effect. The essay concludes by summarizing the implications of the James-Lange theory in understanding the complex interplay of emotion, stress, and health, and emphasizes the importance of recognizing and managing physiological responses to maintain emotional well-being.

James-Lange Theory: Arousal comes before emotion
The James–Lange theory is essentially a hypothesis based upon the nature and origin
of emotions and is considered as being one among the earliest theories of emotion in recent
psychology (Gross and Barrett, 2011). The James-Lange theory of emotions proposed by
James and Lange, suggests that emotions arise as an outcome of physiological responses
towards events (Deckers, 2018). Emotions are time and again supposed as being judgments
regarding a situation, which result in feelings along with physiological modifications. In
simple terms, this particular theory proposes that individuals have a physiological reaction
towards environmental stimuli and their elucidation regarding that particular physical
reaction then leads to an emotional experience (Barrett, 2017). As per this theory of emotion,
experiencing an external stimulus results in a physiological reaction. Moreover, the emotional
response relies greatly upon the way how one interprets those physical responses (Gross and
Barrett, 2011).
Additionally, the James-Lange emotion theory, points toward the fact that emotions are equal
to the array of varied physiological arousal resulting from external occurrences (Deckers,
2018). According to James and Lange theory, for somebody to sense emotions, he/she needs
to firstly understand the bodily reactions like augmented respiration, augmented heart rate or
at times, sweaty hands (Gross and Barrett, 2011). Additionally, once such physiological
response is acknowledged, after that the individual could say that he/she could sense the
emotions. This is essentially opposite to the usual manner of thinking regarding the cause and
effect association amid the emotion experience as well as its demonstration (Barrett, 2017).
Further, James and Lange theory focussed upon the fact that the autonomic actions and
activity, which are induced through emotional stimuli, build a sense of emotion (Gross and
Barrett, 2011).
Article Summary
To start with, people might come across several different stress occurrences in day-to-day
life. In case if such occurrences are disposed unsuitably, there would be an increased
likelihood of generating a sequence of negative impacts. It has been highly observed that
individuals face a multifaceted range of negative emotions, like anxiety, depression, anger
and lastly, grief during real-life traumatic occurrences. Moreover, such negative emotions

might possibly result in poorer health results and following augmented threat of
complications, a declined quality of living and finally, augmented health care application.
Likewise, the present study by Du et. al. (2018) attempts to investigate the forceful effect of
stress upon negative emotions within day-to-day life and examines the facilitating part played
by rumination in this respect. Additionally, for this study an aggregate of 100 college students
were engaged and were supposed to report their supposed stress, existing ruminative thinking
as well as negative emotions (taking in anxiety, anger and depression. Further, the research
findings highlighted that the greater amount of stress at the particular point anticipated
amplified negative emotions at subsequent time taking in depression, anxiety and anger. At
personal level, rumination considerably facilitated the relation of stress with anger,
depression and anxiety. At amid-person level, general rumination considerably facilitated the
relation amid anger and stress. It has been suggested that individuals perceiving greater
amount stress might exhibit higher rumination that eventually might result in increased level
of negative emotions.

References:
Barrett, L. F. (2017). How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt
Deckers, L. (2018). Motivation: Biological, Psychological, and Environmental. New York:
Routledge
Du, J., Huang, J., An, Y. and Xu, W. (2018). The relationship between stress and negative
emotion: The Mediating role of rumination. Clin Res Trials, 4(1), 4-5. Retrieved From:
https://www.oatext.com/pdf/CRT-4-208.pdf
Gross, J. J. and Barrett, L. (2011). Emotion Generation and Emotion Regulation: One or Two
Depends on Your Point of View. Emotion Review, 3(1), 8–16.