Carl Lange Walter Cannon Physiologist Walter Cannon has been called James' arch-nemesis. Cannon claimed that there are five kinds of evidence suggesting that James-Lange were mistaken in their contention that visceral activation change could account for the differences in emotional experience. The various emotions don't appear to differ from one another with regard to the pattern of visceral processes. If such differences existed they would allow one to distinguish among the emotions using visceral processes, which James assumes we do. If the experience of a given emotion wasn't anything more than the sensation of visceral reactions, one would expect that the emotion could be artificially induced.
Visceral reactions occur somewhat late following an emotionally provocative stimulus.
Between one and two seconds will pass before visceral reactions take place. This is not compatible with how one behaves in a dangerous traffic situation, for in that case we become frightened all of a sudden, and it isn't until much later that we experience visceral reactions to that fear. Cannon's objections are not unreasonable, and as we will see in the next section, quite accurate.