Schachter and Singer (1962) Cognitive, Social and Phyiological Developments of Emotional State

Aim:

1. To investigate whether when we are in state of physiological arousal that has no immediate explanation and what role cognitive factors play in the experience that emotion.
2. Whether when we do have an appropriate explanation for feeling a certain emotion we always label it as the most appropriate emotion.

Method:

Design:

Dependent variable: the emotional arousals of participants.

Independent variable:

1. Information about the injection

• Epinephrine informed – told they were injected with Suproxin and the side effects would not last more than 20 minutes e.g. hand shaking, heart pounding and feeling warm.
• Epinephrine ignorant – PPTs injected with Suproxin, not told what side effects to expect.
• Epinephrine misinformed – told they would feel side effects for no longer than 20 minutes. Misled on effects e.g. feeling numb, itchy and headache.
• Saline – participants injected with saline solution but did not know.

2. Situation experienced: standardised, stooge did not know which injection condition participants were in.

• Euphoria – waiting room put into a state of wild mess and participants could help themselves with paper, pencils or erasers. As experimenter left, stooge would introduce himself, make ice-breaker comments and play with items, encouraging PPT to join.
• Anger – PPTs told to complete a questionnaire, stooge would say that it was unfair to receive injection without knowing the name. Questionnaire started being personal = stooge made comments innocently to increasingly annoyed, ended in rage.

EPI MIS NOT RUN IN SECOND CONDITION.

Two measures of emotion collected:

• Observation – PPTs watched through a one-way mirror. Stooge would engage in 14 standard behaviours during euphoria condition = PPTS behaviour was put into 4 categories: More than one observer.

1. Joins in with activity
2. Initiates new activity
3. Ignores stooge
4. Watches stooge.

In anger condition, the behaviour was coded in 6 categories:

1. Agrees with stooge
2. Disagrees with stooge
3. Neutral behaviour
4. Initiates agreement or disagreement
5. Watches stooge
6. Ignores stooge

• Self-report – when session ended, participants were asked to complete a questionnaire (asked to rate how angry, good or happy they felt, if they felt any side effects) with rating scales.

Participants:

• 184 males from University of Minnesota
• 90 per cent volunteers to be in a subject pool
• Received two extra points in final exam for each experiment they took part in.
• All of them were cleared by student health service.

Procedure:

• PPTs were told the study was about effects of a vitamin supplement on vision.
• They were told the drug was Suproxin – procedure would be mild and harmless.
• They gave informed consent.
• They were debriefed at the end – asked if PPTs were suspicious of the stooge = 11 data were eliminated.

Results:

• All PPTs in the epinephrine conditions showed increased pulse rate and more palpitations and tremors.
• Epi Inf group were less euphoric than Epi Mis group (engaged more in activities and initiated activities).
• Epi Inf group were less euphoric than Epi Ign group.
• No difference between placebo and Epi Miss group in terms of euphoria.
• Epi Inf group showed the highest-levels of self-report anger.
• Epi Ign showed most overt anger.

When participants had a satisfactory explanation to their physiological state of arousal they did not label this state with alternative information available.

When participants did not have an adequate explanation, they used the current situation they were in to explain their heightened physiological state.

Conclusion:

There are two factors involved in our experiences of emotions: our physiological arousal or state and the information or cognitions that help us to understand the behaviour we feel. These interact and make us feel different emotions.

Strengths:

• High level of control – there was a high level of control because it was a laboratory experiment. Therefore, there is less chance that any extraneous variables could affect the reliability of results.
• Replicable – the procedure was standardised in terms of allocation random participants, giving each group the same information and keeping the stooge unaware. This means that the study can be replicated easily to check the accuracy of the results.

• Control over demand characteristics – the use of one-way mirror reduced the chance of demand characteristics occurring, because participants did not know they were being watched.

Weaknesses:

• Lack of ecological validity – the experiment was conducted in an artificial setting; therefore, the participants may have behaved differently. Also, the way researchers induced emotions lacked ecological validity because in the real-world humans are aware of an event before they experience emotional arousal.
• Lack of generalisability – the sample was made up of only males from the university of Minnesota, therefore the results cannot be generalised to females and people from other areas.
• Use of independent groups – the results may have been affected by participant’s variables as they only took part in one condition. Therefore, participants who were ‘naturally’ more euphoric or angry may have been in those groups – making the labelling factor not always the one affecting behaviour.