James-Lange theory refers to a proposal that an event first provokes autonomic and skeletal responses and that Emotion is the perception of those responses. It states that
emotional
feelings follow bodily arousal and come from awareness of such arousal.
According to James-Lange theory, the following successive stages are involved in producing emotions:
(1) There is an emotional stimulus (example, a mean-looking man comes very fast to me as I am getting money from an automatic teller machine/ATM late in the night and alone)
(2) This emotional stimulus produces bodily changes (my heart beat faster and my breathing deepens - there is an arousal in my automatic nervous system).
(3) The feedback from bodily changes leads to the experience of emotion (I became anxious and fearful).
(See James-Lange Theory of Emotion)