ABSTRACT
Experiments on dogs and cats by C. S. Sherrington and W. B. Cannon et al. showed that the animals' emotional responses were apparently unaffected by neural lesions that almost completely removed feedback from the viscera. S. Schachter and J. E. Singer tried to manipulate these two factors separately by generating unexplained arousal with epinephrine injections, and cognitive appraisal by pairing each participant with a confederate who behaved angrily or happily. It is widely agreed that emotions have subjective, behavioral, cognitive and peripheral physiological components. From a common sense viewpoint, the physiological and expressive changes seem to be the results of emotional arousal. The result was the dominant theory of emotion for the next 30 years or so: the James–Lange theory. If emotional feeling results from feedback from peripheral physiological activity, a complete lesion of the spinal cord would lead to decreased intensity of emotional feeling.
