According to most psychologists, common sense suggests that because our emotions are involuntary, any action taken must come after the emotion. For example, if you’re afraid of bears, you’ll run away from them. But according to many psychologists, the order is reversed, so that your fear causes your body to react before your brain does. William James and Carl Langs proposed that the first response to stress is physical – increased heart rates and tremors. These are actually caused by our emotions and they actually affect how we feel. Other studies have shown physical changes can actually change emotions and the way we feel about things.
In spite of the wide acceptance of the James–Lange Theory, later psychologists such as Walter Cannon and Philip Bard argued that the physiological and emotional responses are simultaneous rather than sequential. They claimed that we assess the situation and then produce an emotion. Richard Lazarus argued that we make a cognitive judgment about a situation, triggering an emotional response. Recently, Robert Zajonc has argued that our thoughts and feelings are different processes, and that common sense may be correct in assuming that our initial reaction is emotional.
