Ellsworth P C
University of Michigan, Research Center for Group Dynamics, Ann Arbor 48106.
Psychol Rev. 1994 Apr;101(2):222-9. doi: 10.1037/0033-295x.101.2.222.
During his lifetime William James's complex ideas about emotion were oversimplified to the point of caricature, and for the next half century scientific research on emotion was driven by the oversimplified version--by the idea that emotions are merely the sensation of bodily changes. In fact, the interpretation of the stimulus was an essential feature of James's ideas, but one that seemed so obvious that it did not require explanation. Three damaging scientific consequences of the mischaracterization of James's views were (a) the nearly exclusive focus on bodily process, (b) the reification of emotions as entities rather than processes, and (c) the linear thinking produced by the concern with the sequence of affect, interpretation, and bodily response.
在威廉·詹姆斯的有生之年，他关于情感的复杂思想被过度简化到了漫画化的程度，在接下来的半个世纪里，关于情感的科学研究都被这个过度简化的版本所驱动——即认为情感仅仅是身体变化的感觉。事实上，对刺激的解读是詹姆斯思想的一个基本特征，但这个特征看起来太过明显，以至于不需要解释。对詹姆斯观点的错误描述产生了三个有害的科学后果：（a）几乎只关注身体过程；（b）将情感实体化，而非视为过程；（c）由于关注情感、解读和身体反应的顺序而产生的线性思维。
