Misattribution of Arousal

In psychology, misattribution of arousal is the process by which people mistake what is actually causing them to feel physiologically aroused, as when someone experiencing physiological responses related to fear mislabels those responses as romantic arousal instead; the mistake is possible because many different stimuli, romantic and fearful alike, can produce similar physiological symptoms such as increased blood pressure or shortness of breath. One of the earliest studies of the phenomenon, conducted by Schachter and Singer in 1962, held that the experience of arousal is inherently ambiguous and can therefore be misattributed to the wrong stimulus, an idea from which the researchers developed the two-factor theory of emotion. A later study by White and colleagues in 1981 found that people placed in an unrelated aroused state rated an attractive confederate more highly, and disliked an unattractive confederate more strongly, than raters who were not aroused, illustrating how misattributed arousal can shape perceptions of a potential romantic partner.