Anxiety Theory, Research, and Intervention in Clinical and Health Psychology.
Cognitive/ subjective (negative mood, worry, self-preoccupation).
Physiological (chronic over arousal).
Behavioral (avoidance).
Theory 2. James- Lange theory.
Stimulus----------Body----------Emotion.
SNS is aroused, emotion comes after.
Anxiety.
The central notion of this theory, put forward by James (1884) and Lange (1885), is that an emotion-evoking stimulus produces both autonomic activity (heart rate increase, sweating, ect.) and changes in skeletal muscles (running, facial expressions, ect.). The theory holds that the subjective experience, or feeling, of emotion is then a direct result of these changes. No cognitive appraisal relating to emotion precedes the bodily response; rather it is the bodily response, which is the emotion. We do not therefore stammer and tremble because we are anxious, but are anxious because we stammer and tremble. In James's terms: the bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION of the existing fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion. So, for example, if a person feels anxious at the dentist and their stomach turns, they tremble and sweat, in James's terms it is this reaction, which results in the feeling of anxiety. The most basic problem with James's theory, however, is in its failure to specify the mechanism by which bodily changes are initiated by the perception of the exciting fact. Other problems have been raised by Cannon (1927).
Theory 3. Cannon's Theory.
Body changes occur to slowly trigger sudden emotion.
Body responses are not distinct enough to trigger different emotions.
Anxiety.
In 1927 Cannon published a review and critique of the James- Lange theory and proposed an alternative viewpoint. Cannon argued in his critique that bodily sensation is to slow, diffuse and insensitive to account for the speed and wide range of human emotional experience.
