Primary sourceNewspaper article1884
What Is an Emotion?
William James · 1884
James's 1884 article in the journal Mind arguing that emotions are our perception of bodily changes.
James wrote this article himself, laying out his influential theory of emotion as bodily feeling.
About this source
What it is
This is a journal article published in 1884 by William James, a professor concerned with the new science of psychology. In it he challenges the physiologists of his day, who had studied the brain's role in thought and will but largely ignored emotion.
Why it matters
James proposes what became known as the James-Lange theory of emotion: that we do not cry because we feel sad, but feel sad because we cry — bodily changes come first, and the emotion is our awareness of them. This was a radical idea for its time and became a foundation of modern psychology. It shows James working at the boundary between philosophy and the emerging science of the mind.
Look closer
- What evidence does James offer for his claim that bodily sensations come before emotion?
- Why might this idea have seemed strange or controversial to readers in 1884?
- How might someone test or challenge this theory today?
This newspaper article is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of William James on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.
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