Walter B. Cannon

James’s former undergraduate student, later his most consequential critic. The Cannon–Bard theory is the principal challenge to James–Lange and the source of the “undifferentiated arousal” premise that runs through activation theory and Schachter–Singer.

The critique of James–Lange

From studies of sympathectomized cats (which still hissed and showed piloerection), Cannon concluded autonomic feedback is not necessary for emotional behavior. His arguments: (1) the same visceral changes occur across different emotions and even non-emotional states → undifferentiated arousal; (2) visceral responses are too slow; (3) viscera have too few afferents to carry emotional distinctions. Feelings and bodily responses are separate outputs of central (thalamic) processing. See autonomic-specificity-of-emotion.

Lasting effect

Per Mandler, Cannon’s importance “is not so much that [his criticisms] destroyed the James–Lange theory, but rather that they were influential in producing an extensive research tradition in the psychophysiology of emotion” — the very tradition (Ax, Ekman, Levenson) that later rebutted his non-specificity claim. See friedman-2010-jamesian-perspective.

Cannon vs the “adrenalizing” of emotion

Per Dror, Cannon insisted on distinguishing “strong” (sympathetic) from “soft” (parasympathetic) emotions and studied adrenalin only in rage/fear. Schachter & Singer’s universalization of sympathetic arousal to every emotion ran directly against this and against 1940s parasympathetic findings. See origins-of-two-factor-theory.