Week 3: The same signal, two meanings

Closing unit 1 — how identical bodily sensations can carry opposite meanings depending on what produced them

8 March 2027

Two-factor theories of emotion argue that a bodily state (raised heart rate, muscular fatigue, adrenaline) is ambiguous on its own — the same signal reads as anxiety or excitement depending on how it’s interpreted in context. The earned ache extends that idea to satisfaction: the same muscular fatigue reads as depletion after an aimless workout and as reward after labor with a result. The sensation doesn’t change; the meaning wrapped around it does.

Outline#

• Schachter–Singer and the ambiguity of raw physiological arousal
• what “earned” adds that a treadmill can’t supply on its own
• closing unit 1: three weeks of sensation arriving whole, before the mind has had a chance to interpret it