ABSTRACT
R. H. Walters and R. D. Parke discuss problems associated with subjectivity and awareness in an important paper setting forth their theory of social motivation and social influence. Walters and Parke's explanation of these observations is that fear or anxiety was not the issue but rather the learned inappropriateness of an emotional response to such a challenge, leading subjects to conceal any anxiety they might have felt for fear of ridicule. Walters and Parke have sought to create a theoretical and empirically well-supported bridge between social, developmental and physiological psychology, linked to the notion of a general state of arousal and to principles of social learning. Walters and Parke interpret these results rather differently. They first suggest that it is unclear from Stanley Schachter's results whether subjects identified their emotions only after exposure to the confederate: the subjects may have identified their feelings simply by observing their own actual or anticipated behavior.
