What are you feeling right now? Can you describe it? Are you happy that it is Friday and the school week is almost over? Are you nervous about an upcoming exam? Are you homesick, wishing you could see your family and pets?
When I asked you what you were feeling, I asked you to identify an emotion. We all know what emotions are, and we can easily bring forth examples. But, it is much more difficult to answer the questions of how and why we are able to experience emotion.
Psychological researcher Stanley Schacter developed a two-factor theory of emotion. This theory asserts that in order for one to feel and emotion, two components must be available. First, one must undergo physiological arousal; heart rate increases, breathing rate increases, one’s palms start to sweat. Second, one must acknowledge this change in body physiology and attempt to understand it. Only after physiological arousal occurs, accompanied by a social cognition, can an emotional label be created.
This theory asserts that humans can actually make mistakes when identifying emotion. When the social cognition created about arousal is incorrect, one has undergone the process of misattribution.
Misattribution is the key to how emotional theory relates to social psychology. The social situation is often ambiguous, and although we do not feel as though we are constantly confused, our brains work incredibly hard to make sense of all facets of the situation. The vagueness of the social situation offers a breeding ground for misattribution.
In order to test the occurrence of misattribution, in relation to Schacter’s two-factor theory of emotion, researchers Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron developed an experiment involving a suspension bridge and a beautiful woman.
In 1974, Dutton and Arthur observed people walking along a suspension bridge. The bridge was strung at an extremely high height over a large river. The researchers knew that crossing the bridge evoked physiological arousal, as it was a slightly dangerous and scary situation. They decided to capitalize on this arousal in order to emotional misattribution.
Dutton and Arthur had an attractive woman approach different men, give them her phone number, and tell them to call her some time. Unfortunately for these men, the number was actually that of Dutton and Arthur’s laboratory. Some of these interactions occurred in the middle of the bridge, where the men’s physiological arousal was high. Other interactions took place on a bench a few feet away from the edge of the bridge, where men sat to relax after crossing the bridge. These men were experiencing less physiological arousal.
A larger percentage of men who had been approached by the woman while standing the middle of the bridge called her phone number. The men who had been approached while cooling down on the bench where less likely to call the woman back.
This was due to the misattribution of arousal. The men in the middle of the bridge attributed their arousal to sexual attraction to the woman, when in actuality, they felt that way because of the alarming height of the bridge. Men that had time to unwind on the bench, did not have this extra arousal to attribute to sexual attraction.
The results of this study show that we can actually be experiencing an “incorrect” emotion. It is often difficult to think about emotions in biological terms, because our feelings seem so personal and almost spiritual. It is hard to believe that what one feels could possibly be “wrong” in relation to the social situation, but psychological studies have proven the existence of misattribution.
