Okay, so for this one, imagine you just got an offer from your dream job and you're feeling very excited about it. So in the space we have here, we're going to write out how both the James Lange theory as well as Lazarus's cognitive mediational theory would explain this process. I've written out two theories here. As a reminder, our James Lange theory essentially states that a stimulus is going to lead to a specific physiology. Basically, each emotion is going to have a unique specific physiological profile and based on the physiology that we are feeling we can then label our emotion.
So, if we were to kind of write that out, our job offer, of course, is our stimulus and then that is going to lead to a change in physiology or physiological arousal. I'm just going to put a little "s" next to that to remind us that this is a specific type of arousal. And then based on that specific physiology we would be able to kind of label that feeling as excitement. So we would know that we're feeling excited. Alright.
So that's our James Lange theory. Super simple but it kind of omits cognition. Unlike Lazarus's cognitive mediational theory, which of course puts cognition front and center. The idea behind this theory is that the stimulus is going to lead to a cognitive appraisal. This appraisal would happen very quickly and unconsciously sometimes, and then that appraisal is going to lead to both your emotional experience as well as physiological changes.
If we were to write this out, once again our job offer is our stimulus and then that is going to lead to some type of physiological or cognitive appraisal. I'm just going to write out "great" here, but you could write in whatever you want. There's just some kind of cognition on how you feel or think about or are interpreting that event. And then based on that cognitive appraisal, we would end up with our emotional experience of excitement as well as our physiological arousal. Remember, in Lazarus's cognitive mediational theory, this is the only theory of emotion that places cognition before the physiology, saying that the cognition actually causes the physiology, so it is unique for that reason.
Alright. So that is how both the James Lange theory as well as Lazarus's cognitive mediational theory would explain this emotional process, and I will see you guys in our next one. Bye bye.