Mulgrave TOK

Author gives three or four key considerations for each essay title. This would be a good practice for unpacking essays.

Old-fashioned design, but an extensive resource

"There are many theories of emotion but four of them are perhaps the most commonly discussed. They are called the James-Lange theory, Cannon-Bard theory, Schachter-Singer theory, and Opponent Process theory of emotion. The following is a brief explanation of the four theories. The first one is the oldest of the four. It is known as the James-Lange theory. As you may have guessed, this theory originated from two theorists called William James (1884) and Carl Lange (1887). Even though they developed this theory independently from each other, it is interesting that they came up with the same idea around the same time (1884-1887). This theory says that emotion is not directly caused by the perception of an event but rather by the bodily response caused by the event. This means that, in order to experience emotion, we must first experience the bodily response (e.g., fast breathing, racing heart, sweaty hands) that corresponds to the emotion. Once we experience the bodily response we experience the emotion. For example, if I see a big scary dog barking at me, my heart begins to race. Noticing my heart race, my brain figures out that I am experiencing fear. The second theory is known as the Cannon-Bard theory. It began with the work of Walter Cannon. He thought that the James-Lange theory was flawed for a number of reasons (Cannon, 1927). In his experiments, he found that in certain animals like cats, emotion occurs even if the brain was cut off from the information about bodily responses. He also argued that the same bodily responses accompany many different emotions. For example, when your heart is racing, it may mean you are angry, but it may also mean you are excited in a positive way. This means that our brain cannot just rely on our bodily responses to know which emotion we are experiencing ( i.e., there must be something else that tells us whether we are angry or excited). Philip Bard agreed with Cannon and continued examining emotion in the brain. Through their re

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