Speisman et al.
Speisman et al. (1964)
Experimental manipulation of emotions through cognitive appraisal
Aim:
To investigate the extent to which manipulation of cognitive appraisal could influence emotional experience.
Procedure:
- In this laboratory experiment participants saw anxiety-evoking films, (e.g. a film of an aboriginal initiation ceremony where adolescent boys were subjected to unpleasant genital cutting).
- This film was shown with three different soundtracks intended to manipulate emotional reactions. The “trauma condition” had a soundtrack with emphasis on the mutilation and pain; the “intellectualization condition” had a soundtrack that gave an anthropological interpretation of the initiation ceremony; the “denial condition” showed the adolescents as being willing and happy in the ceremony.
- During each viewing of the film various objective physiological measures were taken, such as heart rate and galvanic skin response.
Results:
- The participants in the “trauma condition” showed much higher physiological measures of stress than the participants in the two other conditions. The results support the appraisal theory in that the manipulation of the participants’ cognitive appraisal did have a significant impact on the physiological stress reactions. The participants in the “trauma condition” reacted more emotionally.
Evaluation:
- This was a laboratory experiment with rigorous control so it may lack ecological validity, but research on the role of appraisal in real-life emotional events tends to find the same relationship as laboratory research.
- The study could be a demonstration of how biological and cognitive factors interact in emotion and it illustrates LeDoux’s theory of the two pathways in emotional processing.