Feelings: The Perception of SelfFeelings argues for the counter-intuitive idea that feelings do not cause behavior, but rather follow from behavior, and are, in fact, the way that we know about our own bodily states and behaviors. This point of view, often associated with William James, is called self-perception theory. Self-perception theory can be empirically tested by manipulating bodily states and behaviors in order to see if the corresponding feelings are produced. In this volume, James D. Laird presents hundreds of studies, all demonstrating that feelings do indeed follow from behavior. Behaviors that have been manipulated include facial expressions of emotion, autonomic arousal, actions, gaze, and postures. The feelings that have been induced include happiness, anger, fear, romantic love, liking, disliking, hunger, and feelings of familiarity. These feelings do not feel like knowledge because they are knowledge-by-acquaintance, such as the knowledge we have of how an apple tastes, rather than verbal, knowledge-by-description, such as the knowledge that apples are red, round, and edible. Many professional theories of human behavior, as well as common sense, explain actions by an appeal to feelings as causes. Laird argues to the contrary that if feelings are information about behaviors that are already ongoing, feelings cannot be causes and that the whole mechanistic model of human behavior as "caused" in this sense seems mistaken. He proposes an alternative, cybernetic model, involving hierarchically stacked control systems. In this model, feelings provide feedback to the control systems, and in a further elaboration, this model suggests that the stack of control systems matches a similar stack of levels of organization of the world. An original contribution to the study of the relationship between feelings and behavior, the volume will be of interest to social, emotional, and cognitive psychologists. |
Contents
3 | |
2 Emotional Expressions | 22 |
3 Postures Gaze and Action | 49 |
4 Autonomic Arousal and Emotional Feeling | 64 |
5 Theoretical Summary on Emotion | 88 |
Confidence Pride and SelfEsteem | 114 |
7 Motivation and Hunger | 125 |
8 Cognitive Feelings of Knowing Familiarity and Tip of the Tongue | 138 |
9 Attitudes and Cognitive Dissonance | 158 |
10 SelfPerception Theory in Full | 183 |
11 SelfPerception Levels of Organization and the MindBody Relation | 205 |
233 | |
255 | |
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actions activity actually anger angry answer autonomic arousal autonomic responses aware beta-blockers body cause certainly changes chapter cognitive feelings common sense consistent context counterattitudinal cue group Daryl Bem demonstrated described dualism eating emotional behaviors emotional experiences emotional feelings ence epinephrine example expected experimenter bias explain expression manipulation procedure expressive behavior facial expressions fact fear feeling of knowing ganglion cells gaze happy higher level identify increased individual differences induced induced-compliance intensity James’s theory judgments kind knowledge by acquaintance Koriat Lanzetta less levels of organization measures memory mental misattribution muscles normal-weight number of studies objects observed occur one’s original attitude overjustification effect overweight panic disorder patterns perception theory performance personal cues posture predicted problem produced qualia question reason reference value relationship responsive to personal rience role romantic romantic love sadness Schachter seems self-perception processes self-perception theory situational cues smile speech subjects task tion words