Elementary Psychology Exam 1 Practice

Emotional experience and physiological arousal occur at the same moment. In Cannon-Bard theory, the thalamus sends signals simultaneously to the cortex to create the feeling of emotion and to the autonomic nervous system to produce arousal, so you experience both at once rather than one causing the other. For example, when you encounter something fear-inditing, your heart rate rises and you feel fear at the same time, not one after the other. This contrasts with theories like James-Lange, which says arousal comes first and then you interpret it as emotion, or the two-factor view, which emphasizes arousal plus cognitive labeling, and with purely cognitive accounts that place cognition as the driver. So the best description is that emotional experience and physiological arousal happen simultaneously.