#schacter

Due to work commitments and other commitments, I have decided to discontinue my participation in Resurrection OCT.

Round 1 just ended and my holiday took most of the time I needed to do my round anyways.

I wish all other competitors the best and heaps of fun.

Schacter and Singer composed the Two-Factor theory of emotion. This theory states that there are two main factors in the creation of emotion, physical arousal and what we think about this, how we label it. So, our body undergoes physical changes when creating an emotional response and our understanding of this change will depend on what we know it to be e.g. being sweaty could be deemed a sign that we are nervous. Therefore, this can also be shaped by our environment, if we are in a situation that we positively evaluate, we are more likely to interpret any emotional physical changes as happiness.To test this, they conducted the following study…

Topic: Cognitive psychology/biopsychology

Key Researcher(s): Schacter and Singer

Year: 1962

Study type: a laboratory study with observation and self report measures

Study population: 184 male college students

Procedure:

The participants were taken to a room at the start of the study and were told that the aim of the study was to test the impact vitamin injections have on visual perception. There were initially 195 participants but only 184 agreed to have injections.

The participants were then given an injection by a doctor, it was either adrenaline or a placebo (a mock drug e.g. a sugar pill). All those of you who have studied the fight or flight effect will know that the hormone adrenaline arouses the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system in order to prepare the body to fight or flee. This leads to physical changes such as pupil dilation, sweat secretion, immunosuppression, rapid breathing and an increased heart rate.

Once injected, the participants were put into one of four conditions (independent variable #1). Adrenaline ignorant (injected with adrenaline without being informed of its effects), Adrenaline informed (injected with adrenaline and informed of its effects), Adrenaline misinformed (injected with adrenaline and informed of effects that would not actually occur such as numb feet) and the control group (given the placebo which would not have any effect and were therefore not informed of any effects.)

The participants were then sent to a room where they would meet another participant who would actually be a confederate (an actor hired by the researchers who is in on the study) who did not know which of the four conditions the participants were in. The confederate would behave in one

of two ways (independent variable #2): angered or euphoric.

In the euphoric condition, the researcher told the participants they had 20 minutes before their visual test and could help themselves to the pencils, rubbers and paper in the room. The confederate would start a conversation and then fiddle and play with the stationary and encourage the participant to join in.

In the angered condition (adrenaline misinformed participants did not enter this condition as the euphoric scenario was considered enough), the participants would be asked to fill out questionnaires whilst the confederate complained about them not being told about the injections when first asked to join the study.  They would then fill in the questionnaire, the questions slowly grew more and more intrusive e.g. asking about sexual experiences. The confederate would then make often standardised (made the same for each study in order to create consistency) remarks about the questions, this grew in intensity before they acted enraged at the end.

The researchers would not only observe the expressions of the participants from behind a one-way mirror but also got the participants to fill in self-report questions that would assess how they were feeling. 

The results/conclusion:

The participants given adrenaline did show the physical changes expected whereas the participants given the placebo did not, showing that being injected by the hormone did make a difference. However, 5 participants in the adrenaline condition did not show the symptoms and were therefore deducted from the results. During the euphoric condition, the participants who were misinformed showed the greatest happy emotion, followed by the adrenaline ignorant ones. This implies that the participants were happier because they did not have the proper explanation of their physical changes to generate labels for their emotions which made them more dependent on their cognitions. As cognitions are our thinking patterns, these would have likely been shaped by the behaviour of the confederate, thus leading the participants to interpret it as happiness - supporting the two-factor model. Similarly, in the angered condition the adrenaline ignorant participants experienced the highest levels of anger. They too were more likely to have their perception of their emotions moulded by the confederate as they had no other way of explaining the physical changes they were experiencing.

This study supports the two-factor model of emotion because it shows how physical changes are standard and do contribute to the understanding of emotion, but it is our perception of these changes in terms of how we are feeling that really help to generate an understanding of emotion overall. This is exhibited in how even though the adrenaline participants in the euphoric condition were experiencing changes symptomatic of panic, they labelled this as happiness because they had no further understanding of it but they did have the confederate there to manipulate their perception.

Image one source: https://sites.google.com/site/hookappsychology/emotion-by-gabriel-goldhagen/two-factor-theory

Schacter's Affliliation Study