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Arousal is the physiological and psychological state of being awoken or of sense organs stimulated to a point of perception. It involves activation of the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) in the brain, which mediates wakefulness, the autonomic nervous system, and the endocrine system, leading to increased heart rate and blood pressure and a condition of sensory alertness, desire ...
The misattribution of arousal study tested Schachter and Singer's two-factor theory of emotion. Psychologists Donald G. Dutton and Arthur P. Aron wanted to use a natural setting that would induce physiological arousal.
In psychology, misattribution of arousal is the process whereby people make a mistake in assuming what is causing them to feel aroused.For example, when actually experiencing physiological responses related to fear, people mislabel those responses as romantic arousal.
For example, a positive valence would shift the emotion up the top vector and a negative valence would shift the emotion down the bottom vector. [11] In this model, high arousal states are differentiated by their valence, whereas low arousal states are more neutral and are represented near the meeting point of the vectors.
Although the study took place in 1962, it is still studied in both psychology and communication fields today as an example of appraisal theory in relation to affect and emotion. Through these findings, Schachter and Singer assess that an event happens which in turn elicits as physiological arousal.
In both examples, the excitation-transfer process involves an initial stimulus (watching a thrilling, suspenseful, or horror-filled movie, or riding a roller coaster) that induces physiological arousal. This arousal transfers to a subsequent stimulus (answering a phone call or meeting a friend) and is misattributed to the new situation.
Emotions were thus a result of two-stage process: general physiological arousal, and experience of emotion. For example, the physiological arousal, heart pounding, in a response to an evoking stimulus, the sight of a bear in the kitchen. The brain then quickly scans the area, to explain the pounding, and notices the bear.
The James–Lange theory (1964) is a hypothesis on the origin and nature of emotions and is one of the earliest theories of emotion within modern psychology. It was developed by philosopher John Dewey and named for two 19th-century scholars, William James and Carl Lange (see modern criticism for more on the theory's origin).