William James and emotion: is a century of fame worth a century of misunderstanding?
During his lifetime William James's complex ideas about emotion were oversimplified to the point of caricature, and for the next half century scientific research on emotion was driven by the oversimplified version--by the idea that emotions are merely the sensation of bodily changes. In fact, the interpretation of the stimulus was an essential feature of James's ideas, but one that seemed so obvious that it did not require explanation. Three damaging scientific consequences of the mischaracterization of James's views were (a) the nearly exclusive focus on bodily process, (b) the reification of emotions as entities rather than processes, and (c) the linear thinking produced by the concern with the sequence of affect, interpretation, and bodily response.
Ellsworth
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University of Michigan, Research Center for Group Dynamics, Ann Arbor 48106.
D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D011582:Psychological Theory; D011603:Psychophysiology / Q000266:history; D014481:United States