James-Lange theory the theory, put forward by William James and independently by C. Lange, a Danish anatomist, that an emotion is the felt awareness of bodily reactions to something perceived or thought (James) or just the bodily reactions themselves (Lange). According to the more influential version (James, ‘What Is an Emotion?’ Mind, 1884), ‘our natural way of thinking’ mistakenly supposes that the perception or thought causes the emotion, e.g., fear or anger, which in turn causes the bodily reactions, e.g., rapid heartbeat, weeping, trembling, grimacing, and actions such as running and striking. In reality, however, the fear or anger consists in the bodily sensations caused by these reactions. In support of this theory, James proposed a thought experiment: Imagine feeling some ‘strong’ emotion, one with a pronounced ‘wave of bodily disturbance,’ and then subtract in imagination the felt awareness of this disturbance. All that remains, James found, is ‘a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception,’ a cognition lacking in emotional coloration. Consequently, it is our bodily feelings that emotionalize consciousness, imbuing our perceptions and thoughts with emotional qualities and endowing each type of emotion, such as fear, anger, and joy, with its special feeling quality. But this does not warrant James’s radical conclusion that emotions or emotional states are effects rather than causes of bodily reactions. That conclusion requires the further assumption, which James shared with many of his contemporaries, that the various emotions are nothing but particular feeling qualities. Historically, the James-Lange theory led to further inquiries into the physiological and cognitive causes of emotional feelings and helped transform the psychology of emotions from a descriptive study relying on introspection to a broader naturalistic inquiry. See also EMOTION. R.M.G.