Which term refers to bodily changes such as increased heart rate, sweating, and changes in breathing that accompany emotions?

• A. Expressive Behaviors
• B. Cognitive Appraisal
• C. Emotion (Affect)
• D. Physiological Arousal

Answer: (D)

The main idea here is physiological arousal—the body’s automatic, physical responses that occur with emotion. When you feel emotions, the autonomic nervous system ramps up processes like heart rate, sweating, and faster breathing. This set of bodily changes is separate from how you outwardly express emotion (expressive behaviors) and from how you interpret the situation (cognitive appraisal) or from the subjective feeling itself (emotion or affect). In psychology, exploring arousal helps explain why emotions feel intense and can be part of how we label what we’re feeling in a given moment (as in theories that combine arousal with cognitive interpretation). For example, a sudden scare boosts heart rate and sweating, and depending on context you interpret that arousal as fear. So the term that captures those bodily changes is physiological arousal.