Thought and Feeling: Cognitive Alteration of Feeling States

The volume argues that emotional states are determined, modified, or altered by the cognitive processes of attribution: an internal cue arouses a need for explanation, and the person evaluates that cue against external situational information to label and experience the feeling . It rejects the assumption that emotions are physically defined forces to which people respond directly, insisting instead that we react to our own subjective apperceptions and interpretations of stimuli . The editors present this as an extension of Schachter's two-factor theory, but they push it further by treating the explanatory process as active self-persuasion rather than passive labeling . The result is a framework in which cognition does not merely name an emotion but constitutes it.

The volume is explicitly organized as an elaboration and test of Schachter's framework. London and Nisbett's introductory chapter outlines the sequence: an internal cue arouses evaluative needs, which lead to a process of explanation in terms of external cues, producing an emotional state . The book's five substantive sections map onto this sequence: internal cues, evaluative needs, the process of explaining internal cues, and the effects of external cues . However, contributors extend the theory beyond Schachter's original formulation. Valins's false heart-rate feedback studies and Bem's closing discussion suggest that the process is not passive labeling but active inference and self-persuasion, shifting the framework toward an information-processing model .

Nisbett co-edited the volume with Harvey London and co-authored the introductory chapter outlining Schachter's theory . He also co-authored a chapter with Michael D. Storms on 'Cognitive and Social Determinants of Food Intake' . The volume anticipates Nisbett's later career in two ways: its attention to how people explain their own internal states prefigures his work on self-perception and attribution, and its insistence that cognitive processes can be studied experimentally across applied domains—eating, pain, aggression—foreshadows the integrative ambition of Human Inference and Rules for Reasoning. The book is an early statement of Nisbett's conviction that attribution is not a peripheral topic but the central mechanism linking thought to behavior and feeling.

The book is divided into six parts. Part I provides historical background and analytical framework. Part II examines internal cues: the halo effect, self-attribution of emotion, GSR extinction, and boredom. Part III addresses evaluative needs through Brendan Maher's chapter on delusional thinking. Part IV covers the process of explaining internal cues, with studies on false heart-rate feedback and debriefing resistance. Part V examines external cues across psychopathology (Aaron Beck), pain control, fear reduction, aggression, and food intake. Part VI is Daryl Bem's critical discussion . This structure enacts the editors' claim that the attributional sequence is not confined to laboratory emotion but operates across clinical, physiological, and social phenomena.

Bem's chapter, 'Cognitive Alteration of Feeling States: A Discussion,' provides historical perspective and raises theoretical issues the editors and contributors had largely ignored. A contemporary review notes that Bem questions the implicit assumptions about the interrelationships between cognitive, behavioral, and physiological response systems, and examines the fundamental issue of whether attributions actually mediate behavior . He discusses alternative models based on available data and recommends applying Mischel's approach to personality to this area of social psychology . Bem's contribution is significant because it subjects the volume's organizing framework to critical scrutiny rather than simply extending it, and it identifies the mediation question—whether attributions cause behavior or merely accompany it—as the unresolved core of the attributional program.

The original edition was published by Aldine Publishing Company in Chicago in 1974 . A paperback reissue appeared in 2007 from AldineTransaction, and Routledge published a hardback and ebook edition in 2017 . The 2007 and 2017 editions reproduce the 1974 text with new publisher imprints. The edition matters primarily for pagination and availability: the original 1974 Aldine edition has 239 pages, while the Routledge edition lists 252 pages . Scholars should specify which edition they cite, as page numbers for specific chapters differ. The 2017 Routledge edition is the most readily available for institutional access.