The fact that we react to certain experiences with "Emotion" is obvious. For example, the feeling of embarrassment, which triggers a physiological response that may cause blushing, is caused by a foolish act committed in the company of friends. Although this description of an embarrassed reaction seems logical, the American psychologist William James, in 1884, believed that the course of an emotional experience follows another sequence of events. Following the argument of James, what subjective experience tells us is completely opposite that the sequence of events in an emotional experience. First, he insisted that both physiological excitement and physical reaction are generated by an incident. Only then does the individual perceive or interpret the physical response as an emotion. That is, we associate blushing that caused by physical reaction with embarrassment, such as saying something silly may cause us to blush. In 1890, James went on to claim that "people feel sorry because they cry, furious because they strike, afraid because they shudder." Simultaneously with James' proposition, Carl Lange, a Danish physiologist and psychologist, independently formulated virtually similar theory. The James-Lange theory of emotion (Lange and James, 1922) suggests that different patterns of arousal in the autonomic nervous system create the different emotions people feel, and that physiological arousal occurs prior to the emotion is perceived. In 1927, Another early theory of emotion that challenged the James-Lange theory was proposed by Walter Cannon. He claimed that physical changes caused by the diverse emotions are not sufficiently distinct to allow people to distinguish one emotion from another. After Cannon stated his original theory, in 1934, it was further developed by physiologist Philip Bard. The Cannon-Bard theory suggests that the following chain of events takes place when an emotion is felt. Stimuli which trigger emotion are received by the senses and then are relayed simultaneously to the cerebral cortex, which imparts the conscious mental experience of the emotion, and to the sympathetic nervous system, which generates the physiological state of arousal. In other words, the feeling of emotion occurs roughly the same time when the physiological arousal is experienced. One does not cause the other. In 1962, Schachter and Singer proposed a two-factor theory. Stanley Schachter thought that the early theories of emotion excluded a critical component that the subjective cognitive interpretation of why a state of arousal has occurred. According to this theory, two things must happen in order for a person to feel an emotion. At first, the person must experience physiological arousal. Then, for the person can label it as specific emotion, there must be a cognitive interpretation or explanation. Thus, Schachter delivered the conclusion that a true emotion can appear only if a person is physically aroused and can find the reason for it. When people are in a state of physiological arousal but do not know why they are aroused, they tend to label the state as an emotion that is appropriate to their situation at the time. There were several attempts to replicate the findings of this theory, but they have not been successful. Richard Lazarus, in the 1990, proposed the emotion theory that most heavily emphasizes the cognitive aspect. According to his theory, the first step in an emotional response is cognitive appraisal, and all other aspects of emotion, including physiological arousal, rely on the cognitive appraisal. This theory is most compatible with the subjective experience of an emotion's sequence of events-the sequence that William James reversed long ago. People first appraise a stimulus, or an event, when they encounter it. This cognitive appraisal determines whether the person will have an emotional response, and, if so, what type of response. From this appraisal, the physiological arousal and all other aspects of the emotion arise. In brief, Lazarus contends that emotions are roused when cognitive appraisals of events or circumstances are positive or negative-but not neutral. Some critics criticize the Lazarus theory by saying that some emotional reactions are instantaneous, which means they occur too rapidly to pass through a cognitive appraisal. In respond to the criticisms, Lazarus remarks that some mental processing occurs without conscious awareness, meaning that a person should not know what he or she is responding to or what emotion to feel, or else, some form of cognitive realization must manifest but brief.