The intensity of emotional feelings: Product of peripheral emotional responses or cognitions?

Reviews the function of peripheral feedback for emotions and theories describing emotions as information-processing systems. Cognitive processes are seen as a necessary condition for most human emotional experiences. Coping difficulties and degree of harmful or favorable appraisal have been identified as related to the intensity of the subjective emotional experience as well as that of the autonomic responses. However, there is no solid evidence that the feedback of somatic peripheral emotional responses necessarily induces or intensifies the emotional feeling. Prolonged emotion-induced changes in steroid hormone levels may predispose the individual to react in a certain way in future emotion-eliciting situations, probably by altering the motivational value of critical stimuli.