EM.6: Deep Dive – Part 3: At the Movies -The Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory in Action

Approximate reading time: 3 minutes

Picture yourself back in the movie theatre, this time caught up in a scene that’s a masterful blend of suspense and potential triumph. As the hero dangles from a cliff, your body reacts with a surge of physiological arousal: your heart races, your palms sweat, and your breathing quickens. The Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory suggests that it’s not just this arousal that defines your emotion, but also how you cognitively interpret this arousal in context.

Here’s how it plays out according to the theory:

• Physiological Arousal: The intense scene triggers an automatic, physiological response in your body similar to the fight-or-flight reaction; a surge of adrenaline that primes you for action.
• Cognitive Appraisal: You’re aware of this arousal, but it’s ambiguous on its own. You look for cues in your environment to make sense of it. Is it fear, excitement, or perhaps a mix of both? Your cognitive appraisal of the situation, informed by the context of the movie, labels this arousal.
• Emotional Experience: Based on your appraisal, you experience an emotion. Because you’re in a safe environment, watching a story of potential triumph, you interpret your physiological arousal as excitement and thrill, rather than fear. However, had you appraised the situation differently — say, as a real threat — you might have experienced fear instead.

Schachter and Singer’s theory illuminates why two people can have different emotional reactions to the same movie scene. One person might appraise the hero’s dangerous situation as thrilling (excitement), while another, perhaps recalling a personal fear of heights, might appraise it as terrifying (fear).

In one of their most influential experiments, Schachter and Singer demonstrated that the same physiological arousal could be labeled differently depending on context and expectation, leading to different emotional experiences. Similarly, in the cinema, your physiological response could be labeled differently depending on whether you’re engaged in the narrative, recalling personal experiences, or perhaps even expecting a different movie genre. This cognitive appraisal, influenced by many factors, ultimately shapes your emotional experience in the theatre.