Molly Esp
Key words and themes this week were hedonics, pleasure, pain, reward, optimism, pessimissm, conscious, emotion, unconscious emotion, feeling, behavior, and decision making. This week's readings echoed last week's in references to decision making and emotion, although this week's focus became whether or not emotion can be unconscious and the affects of unconscious "emotion" on consciousness.
I tried to justify this argument on my own as I was reading by thinking of repression and denial as examples of unconscious emotion, but these didn't quite fit because it seems that in both these instances, there has to be a sort of acknowledgement of the emotion at some point in order to repress and deny it. My thoughts then shifted to the "Simple Pleasures" article by Kent Berridge, specifically to the pleasure experiment and whether or not this proved that emotion can be unconscious. I was not convinced since the article's focus was on biological stimulation. I suppose I should lay my bias out there and say that I suspect that I have constructed a view of emotion and feeling that relies on the acknowledgement and internalization of a stimulation. After this week's readings, I have discovered that I am skeptical of the use of "emotion" when talking about unconscious processes.
The readings obviously seemed to go against this view, evident through the experiments used and discussed. The article, "What is an Unconscious Emotion? (A Case for Unconscious "Liking")" summarizes some of the confusion surrounding whether or not emotion can be unconscious. On page 25, the conclusion states,
William James' (1894) theory defined subjective feeling as the essence of emotion. Yet he posited that conscious emotional feeling depended on a unconscious prior case, namely, the bodily reaction to the emotional stimulus. That immediate neurobiological behavior was automatic, but shared certain features with the conscious emotion it enabled, such as elicitiing stimulus and a valenced response. This Jamesian reaction seems to encompass several features of what we have called unconscious core processes of emotion.
I would agree with what is being said here, that unconscious processes are integral to the emotional experience. However, I would disagree that the unconscious processes, or "neurobiological behavior" is an unconscious emotion. It is all part of the experience, but the way I understand it, an emotion is a sequence of processes, including conscious recognition. The second paragraph of the conclusion writes,
Although the contemporary psychology of emotion has tended to emphasise the view of emotion as intrisically conscious, we propose that unconscious emotions also exist. To mediate unconscious emotion, there appears to be a subcortical network available to generate core "liking" reactions to sensory pleasures. In normal adults under some conditions, core "liking" reactions may influence a person's consumption behaviour later, without a person being able to report subjective awareness of the affective reaction at the moment it was caused. When the brain generates an affective response of which the mind is unaware, as we have described here, there exists a truly unconscious emotion.
The use of the word "liking" is very striking to me and I would agree with its use because to use emotion would be to eliminate the difference between unconscious and conscious. I think this is what I have a problem with. The inabiliy to "report subjective awaresness of the affective reaction at the moment it was caused" as an indication of unconscious emotion does not seem to be fair as it seems to me that the authors are signaling out one part of the emotional experience and calling it an entire process. To me, it seems that they are talking about one part of emotion, the unconscious, but in order to call something an emotion I think that there must be a form of conscious recognition, however fleeting and seemingly insignificant.
I found the readings on optimissm and pessimism to be interesting as well, particularly the argument that pessimism makes for more adaptable individuals because they anticipate negative circumstance. However, is it possible to decide your demeanor? Isn't this a combination of personality, environment, and experience? The studies were intriguing because it is generally thought best to be optimistic, but the articles proved that pessimism has its place too and may make someone more readily able to deal with changing circumstance.
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This week's readings also confused the categories of emotion and feeling that I have been using to approach the readings. Based on LeDoux's model, emotion necessarily involves conscious appraisal. It seems that unconscious processes contribute to emotion but I'm having a hard time viewing such processes as emotions. The distinction between "wanting" and "liking" is helpful in establishing how unconscious motivation can contribute to emotion in contradictory or conflicting ways. Are “unconscious emotions” just feelings? Do they necessarily involve a bodily response? Or do unconscious emotions waver in some area between conscious emotions and visceral feelings?
I was interested in Berrdige’s comparison of the modulation of subliminal effects to the way that anxiety “extracts’ subliminal stimuli (2003, 192). Just wondered if anyone had some insight into this concept.
On another note, today’s Science Times article, ‘When Language Can Hold The Answer,’ sheds some light on some of our previous discussions on the role of language in shaping thought, memory, spatial reasoning, etc.
I was also interested in the study surrounding “liking.” I found Berridge’s “Simple Pleasures” article beneficial to my own thoughts on the subject of unconscious emotions. As children, one of the first things that we must learn is the difference between “want” and “need”; however, Berridge spices things up with his conversation on “wanting” versus “liking”. I think that the conversation of “wanting” is very important to some of the issues surrounding addiction and compulsive behavior. A perfect example of this addictive behavior is in the “pleasure electrodes” injected into the male and female patients. Both patients felt overwhelming desires to become stimulated again. Therefore “wanting” becomes an unconscious need: A person might well describe a sudden feeling that life was suddenly more attractive, desirable, and compelling to pursue. They might well ‘want’ to activate their electrode again, even if it produced no pleasure sensation. That would be mere incentive salience ‘wanting’ -- without hedonic ‘liking’.
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