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Schacter-Singer theory: In 1970, the American psychologists Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer, while adopting an eclectic approach to both the earlier theories of emotion, introduced a new theory named Cognitive theory of emotion.
• They suggested that our physical arousal together with our perception and judgement of situation (cognition) jointly determine which emotions we feel.
• In other words, our emotional arousal depends on both physiological changes and the cognitive or mental on both physiological changes and the cognitive or mental interpretation of those changes. One cannot work without the other.
• The necessary detection and explanation for an emotional state always rests with the interpretation of situation. Since this interpretation is purely a subject of cognitive functioning, the cognitive factors are said to be the potent determiners of our emotional states.
The views expressed by Schachter and Singer was also supported by Magda Arnold by stating that cognitive processes control how we interpret our feelings and how we act on them. She used the term Cognitive Appraisal for the identification and interpretation of emotion provoking stimuli.
• A third element, in understanding the relationship between physical reactions and emotional experience aroused on account of the perception of an emotion provoking stimulus.
• Cognitive theory helped us to learn that the emotional experience and physiological changes through which we pass are determined by the way we interpret a situation through the cognitive element of our behaviour in the form of our previous knowledge and our interpretation of the present situation directly affect our emotional experience.