| Term | Definition |
| emotion | a response of the whole organism, involving (1) physiological arousal, (2) expressive behaviors, and (3) conscious experience |
| James-Lange theory | the theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli |
| Cannon-Bard theory | the theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers (1) physiological responses and (2) the subjective experience of emotion |
| two-factory theory | Schachter-Singer's theory that to experience emotion one must (1) be physically aroused and (2) cognitively label the arousal |
| polygraph | a machine, commonly used in attempts to detect lies, that measures several of the phsyiological responses accompanying emotion (such as perspiration and cardiovascular and breathing changes) |
| adaptation-level phenomenon | our tendency to form judgments (of sounds, of lights, of income) relative to a neutral level defined by our prior experience |
| relative deprivation | the perception that one is worse off relative to those with whom one compares oneself |