Two-factor Theory of Emotion - Criticism of The Theory

Criticism of The Theory

Criticism of the theory has come from attempted replications of the Schachter and Singer (1962) study. Marshall and Zimbardo (1979, and Marshall 1976) tried to replicate the Schachter and Singer’s euphoria conditions. Just as Schachter and Singer did, the subjects were injected with epinephrine or a placebo, except the administrator told the subjects that they will be experiencing non-arousal symptoms. Then the subjects were put into four different conditions: subjects injected epinephrine and were exposed to a neutral confederate, another in which they received the placebo and were told to expect arousal symptoms, and two conditions in which the dosage of epinephrine was determined by body weight rather than being fixed. The results found that euphoria confederate had little impact on the subjects. Also, that the euphoric confederate didn’t produce any more euphoria than the neutral confederate did. Concluding that the subjects who were injected with epinephrine were not more susceptible to emotional manipulations than the non-aroused placebo subjects.

Maslach (1979) designed a study to try to replicate and extend on the Schachter and Singer study. Instead of being injected with epinephrine, the administrators used hypnotic suggestions for the source of arousal. Either the subjects were hypnotized or were used as a control (same as the placebo effect in the Schachter and Singer study). Subjects that were hypnotized were given a suggestion to become aroused at the presentation of a cue and were instructed not to remember the source of this arousal. Right after the subjects had been hypnotized, a confederate began acting either in a euphoric or angry condition. Later on in the study the subjects were exposed to two more euphoric confederates. One confederate was to keep aware the source of the arousal, while the other confederates told the subjects to expect different arousal symptoms. The results found that all the subjects both on self-reports and on observation found that unexplained arousal causes negative conditions. Subjects still showed angry emotions regardless of the euphoric confederate. Maslach concluded that when there is a lack of explanation for an arousal it will cause a negative emotion, which will evoke either anger or fear. However, Maslach did mention a limitation that there might have been more negative emotion self-reported because there are more terms referring to negative emotions than to positive ones.