Autonomic Specificity Hypothesis

The hypothesis that emotion-specific physiological responses can be viewed as a particular case of the general psychophysiological principle of stimulus-response specificity. This principle holds that specific stimulus contexts tend to produce discrete, identifiable, and reproducible somatic response patterns. This notion must accommodate the possibility of individual variability in these patterns, consistent with William James’ acknowledgment of emotional differences among individuals. Put another way, emotions are hypothesized to trigger distinct physiological/bodily reactions. Some of these physiological/bodily activations are argued to be unique signatures of the emotion activating them.

The hypothesis that claims that different emotions will lead to different bodily reactions. Each of these bodily reactions is said to be unique to that specific emotion. The bodily reactions of someone experiencing fear, for instance, can be differentiated from the bodily reactions of someone experiencing anger. Each emotion thus has a (mostly) unique 'fingerprint' when it comes to body reactions.

Reference:

Friedman, B. H. (2010). Feelings and the body: the Jamesian perspective on autonomic specificity of emotion. Biological Psychology, 84(3), 383-393. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2009.10.006