Endira Ferrara
The most intriguing aspect of this weeks reading’s is the idea of unconscious emotion, and in particular relation to unconscious pleasure or dislike over a period of time. In examining Berridge and Winkileman’s suggestion that we do possess unconscious emotions, or that certain feelings may be activated by unconscious processes, it is interesting to note that this is clearly evident in our predictions about emotional experience over time.
For example, the Gilbert et. all study looked at feelings of distress or contempt and the researchers concluded that “people may sometimes recover more quickly from truly distressing experiences than from slightly distressing ones.” Participants expected that their feelings at the time of a distressful moment would be a clear indicator of the extent to which they would experience similar feelings some time later. Therefore, the longer these feelings would last is dependent upon the intensity of the feeling when it first occurred. However, results showed that in fact five minutes later participants felt less contempt, and for the partner rather than the nonpartner. When it comes to future events, we generally do not succeed in predicting how we feel. Berridge refers to the notion of implicit emotion with the possibility that “unconscious emotion is most generally expressed as an unconsciously caused emotion that is nonetheless consciously felt. (p.186)” In the case of predicted intensity of emotion, it is clear that participants in Gilbert’s study were not conscious of the cause of their feelings even though they were conscious of the feelings themselves.
Loewenstein discusses the knowledge of information about future events as directly related to how they will experience them. The idea is that information about an event itself causes either pleasure or pain before the event has actually happened. These anticipatory feelings that occur in this waiting process prove to have a huge impact on decisions that are made over a period of time. While economic theory states that generally people want to experience pleasant events more immediately while wanting to delay the experience of unpleasant ones, Loewenstein proposes that with the knowledge of information, people should want to prolong the pleasant event so as to make the pleasurable outcome more desirable or because the period of anticipation itself is pleasurable. They might want to experience distress sooner in order to get it over with.
In terms of the article concerning the benefits of optimism, it is also interesting to note our unawareness in the predictions for the emotional experience of future events. We experience more pleasure in anticipating future events when they are farthest in the future, possibly due to the fact that we unconsciously enjoy the period of anticipation and therefore adopt a hopeful outlook. Finally when the event is closer to occurring, we feel more pessimistic because we gain realization that we must prepare for it, and thus we adopt a more realistic outlook.
If it is true that we are not always aware of the fact that we find pleasure in the anticipation of future events nor are we aware of the extent to which we feel intensity of emotion in the future, then this may prove the fact that as Berridge concludes, “we do not have direct conscious access to core psychological processes that occur within pleasure.”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Sylviane
I was surprised to read that the idea that people gain pleasure or pain from information is somewhat debated, for it seems very obvious to me. I was, though, interested to read about the more temporal aspects of this theory, specifically that the decision to delay or expedite an outcome depends critically on how they feel while waiting (which, I’m sure, is determined by the pain or pleasure they get from the information about the anticipated event). This reminded me of some of the issues we discussed last week regarding emotional vs. rational decision-making. An example they give in this paper is that people often delay getting medical testing because they fear the result. It is clear, though, that rational thinking would allow someone to realize that getting such tests done immediately would allow for more effective and immediate treatment.
“We do not have direct conscious access to core psychological processes that occur within pleasure.”
I wonder if for this reason pleasure is so pleasurable, because at least part of the experience remains unintelligible to our rational, but is merely body? This leads me to the idea of pleasure delaying, and how right I think Loewenstein idea is and what you state, about knowing that something will feel even better if one waits. Patience is the key word; if you don’t immediately snack every time you get hungry a good meal on an empty stomach can be quite delightful. The road is the destination so to say; the time delay factor enhances the eventual present experience. This as you say, is contrary to the neuro-economic theory, which is probably true in some cases. For example one can look at drug addicts, they simply need the means to attain their goal, but the idea of having a rational choice as to pleasure delay the experience of their drug seems impossible. They need immediate satisfaction; nevertheless contempt isn’t reached, but only further and greater cravings.
The idea of unconscious emotions:
This can explain why people become addicted to drugs, although they know consciously it is bad for them; the bodily need is irresistible for them. I also thought of hormones which can cause melancholy feeling for no obvious reason and might result in an irrational crying fit…for all the ladies who have experienced this, isn’t it a very strange idea to be in a way manipulated by your own emotions?
The "Simple Pleasures" article was fascinating to me because of the way Berridge teased out this idea that incentive salience attribution helps account for irrational desires, the wanting of things we have no logical reason to want. I have previously never thought carefully about the inherent differences between liking and wanting, and though I feel somewhat aware of the fact that we do as humans have the capacity to be subliminally altered in our consumption patterns, I don't think I've ever before applied that fact more broadly, to anything other than the evils of advertising. For example, I've never before thought about relational patterns in terms of the unconscious dissociation between liking and wanting that might lead us to have strong irrational desires regarding our connections with others. I'm interested in whether our understandings of our own enjoyment of particular relationships (might as well call it out, I'm talking about romantic stuff here) could in fact be skewed because we cannot consciously differentiate between our wanting for that person and our liking of that person. Could a person trigger some emotional response in us that we mistake for liking, when in fact there are many reasons why rationally we should not be around/with/within a hundred miles of that individual? Is this lack of distinction about the exact nature of our feelings why we keep going back even when it is bad for us?
Post a Comment