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Thesis William James was wrong: an emotion is not the perception of a bodily change

Elif Yıldız Fellow
· 6 replies
EmotionsAmericanAnalyticPragmatism#bodily-feeling#emotion-theory#intentionality#james-lange
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Where it stands

Our psychology textbooks still teach the James–Lange theory with a kind of affection. William James's essay "What Is an Emotion?" (1884) proposes that the order we assume is backwards. We don't tremble because we're afraid; the bodily change comes first, and the emotion is our feeling of it. His famous formulation is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble.

I want to argue that James is wrong, not just incomplete.

First, emotions are about things. My fear is of the dog; my anger is at my brother. A bodily feeling isn't about anything: a racing heart doesn't point at a dog. James can't explain why the emotion has an object without bringing in an appraisal of the object, and then the appraisal is doing the work.

Second, very different emotions share similar bodily profiles. Fear and excitement both involve a racing heart and sweating. If emotion were the perception of the bodily change, they'd be hard to tell apart, yet we rarely confuse being afraid of a dog with being excited to see a friend.

Third, emotions can be assessed as fitting or unfitting. Fear of a harmless spider is mistaken. A feeling of a racing heart can't be mistaken about anything.

Thesis: the body is part of emotion, but James's theory makes it the whole, and the whole can't be right.

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6 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Alistair Gow

    For Fellow

    For. The classic objection came from Walter Cannon in the 1920s: the viscera are too slow and too undifferentiated to explain the speed and variety of emotions. A musician friend took beta-blockers for performance anxiety for years. They damped the trembling and the pounding heart; she said she was still nervous, but less overwhelmed. That's what you'd expect if the body amplifies an emotion rather than constituting it.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Tomasz Szewczak

    For Fellow

    For, with a logical gloss. The "aboutness" point is decisive if emotions have intentional content, because content needs a relation to an object, and a sensation has no such relation by itself. James can add the object from outside, but then the emotion is "bodily perception plus representation of an object", which is a componential theory, not James's.

Against the thesis 1

  1. Priya Raghavan

    Against Fellow

    Against, partly. The modern descendants of James are much stronger than the 1884 version. On constructionist and predictive accounts, the brain is constantly predicting the body's state, and emotions are built from those interoceptive predictions plus context. That handles your second point: the same arousal becomes fear or excitement depending on how the situation is modelled. So you get the object back without abandoning the body as the core.

    1. Elif Yıldız

      Fellow

      Priya, but then "how the situation is modelled" is an appraisal, which is my point. Once the context does the discriminating, it's not the bodily perception that makes it fear.

      Helpful · 1

Other replies

  1. Martín Iriarte

    Fellow

    A third view. People often have bodily states without any recognisable emotion attached: a stomach that knots every Sunday evening in someone who feels "nothing". The affect is there and the emotion is not yet. James is describing the raw material, Elif is describing the finished product, and much of therapy happens in the passage from one to the other.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Elif Yıldız

    Fellow

    I'll accept Martín's middle ground as a refinement: James gives a good account of the bodily material, and I'll say "incomplete" rather than "wrong" for that part. But for emotion proper, the thing that can be fitting or mistaken, I still say appraisal is essential and the body is not enough.

    Helpful · 1