Symposium on Emotion AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM DIFFERENCES AMONG EMOTIONS

Abstract-Following decades of contro-versy and uncertainty, there is now suf-ficient empirical basis for asserting the existence of a limited set of autonomic differences among emotions. Findings of autonomic distinctions among emotions derivedfrom the work of the author and his colleagues using two methods of emotion elicitation are reviewed. For five of these autonomic distinctions, convergent findings from the work of other investigators using the same and other elicitation methods are presented. The questiori of specificity, or whether different: emotions are associ-ated with different patterns of autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity, has long captivated emotion research, with the roots ofthe controversy tracing to James (1884), who argued for specificity, and Cannon (1927), who argued against. The state of affairs circa 1950 was captured in Woodworth and Schlosberg's (1954) ex-perimental psychology textbook: Ever since psychologists started the study of bodily changes during emotion, there has been the hope that some p·atterns would tum up that would differentiate one emotion from another. There have been a number of hopeful leads, but they have not turned out very well.... (p. 183). With the advent of modern psycho-physiological methods, a flurry of re-search in the 1950s generated evidence for specificity (e.g., Ax, 1953; Funken-stein, King, & Drollette, 1954; Schachter, 1957), but any movement to-ward general acceptance of this view was short-lived. In the 1960s, the zeit-geist in psychology was clearly that of undifferentiated ANS activity in emo