Stanley Schachter
Emotion is arousal plus the story we tell about it.
American social psychologist best known for the two-factor theory of emotion and influential work on affiliation, arousal and eating.
Emotion is shaped by both bodily arousal and the meaning we give the situation.
Who they were
Stanley Schachter argued that a feeling is not simply read off the body. The same racing heart can become fear, excitement or attraction depending on how we read the situation around us. His experiments on arousal, affiliation and eating showed how powerfully context shapes what an emotion turns out to be.
Famous books
What they left on the shelf
Terms they cared about
Ideas worth knowing
Their techniques
How the work was done
Best known as a theorist — their ideas shaped the techniques of those who followed.
Their big idea
Two-Factor Theory of Emotion
Stanley Schachter proposed that emotion arises from two ingredients working together: a state of physical arousal, and the cognitive label we attach to it. The body supplies the energy; the mind, reading the situation, decides what to call it.
Questions in their spirit
What they’d ask you
Sit with one. Answer online, or in the app.
Carry the idea forward
Schachter — What they’d ask you
Psipas asks you one small, honest question at a time — and builds the picture from your answers.