This cognitive understanding of the cause of emotions has significant implications especially in regard to dealing with traumatic events. We can do nothing now about an event or experience that happened at some historical point in our lives. But we can change our attitude toward what happened and in changing that attitude we will also feel different about what happened.
Perceptual Theories
This is a recent hybrid of the somatic and cognitive theories of emotion. This theory can be considered neo-Jamesian in that it argues that bodily responses are central to emotions. At the same time it emphasises the meaningfulness of emotions as is recognised by cognitive theories. What is novel about the theory is its claim that conceptually based cognition is not necessary to create such meaning. Bodily changes themselves perceive the meaningful content of the emotion as triggered by the situations. In this respect, emotions are held to be similar to faculties such as vision or touch, which provide information about the relation between the subject and the world in various ways (seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion)