Question

Until recently, many philosophers and psychologists thought that unconscious emotions are impossible. It was believed that the essence of an emotion is to be felt. However, if we are not aware of something it cannot be felt. Hence, it was concluded that we must be conscious of our emotions.

For this research project your job is to find empirical evidence supporting the existence of unconscious emotions. Your data should be distinct from anything you read in A General Theory of Love. You can find your data online, just be sure to cite your source. Once you have the data, explain why it supports the existence of unconscious emotions. In your write up, make sure to address the skeptic, that is, someone who believes there cannot be unconscious emotions.

Minimum length 500 words.

Answer 1

Answer.

Emotions include specific types of negative states such as fear, guilt, anger, sadness, or disgust, as well specific positive states including happiness, joy, love, or pride. While emotions have been identified in the scientific community as powerful motivating factors, there is a general disagreement over the existence of conscious or unconscious emotions. Beginning with Freudian psychoanalysis, emotions were recognised as repressed unconscious feelings about traumatic childhood experiences and unresolved sexual conflicts. The psychoanalytic camp argues in favour of the influence of the hidden aspect of emotions in people’s life.

In their study on interpersonal attraction and social influence, Monahan, Murphy, & Zajonc (2000) subliminally exposed to several neutral stimuli consisting of random visual patterns. These stimuli were repeatedly presented to the experimental group of participants but not to the control group. Later, those participants in the experimental group reported feeling more positive than participants exposed to non- repeated stimuli. Thus, even though no explicit positive information was provided about the stimuli, the mere familiarity with the objects had triggered a sense of comfort and positive affect. The study thus proves the occurrence of mere-exposure effect, as an important factor in interpersonal attraction and social perceptions as even if the participants were not consciously aware of having any positive experiences with the experimental stimuli, they showed an increase in liking for repeated items. This study provides a strong basis for understanding the unconscious process behind emotions an it showed that people’s emotional reactions can be driven by unattended emotional pictures that might influence emotions and decisions without ever being explicitly detected. The results contradict the opposing view on emotions and the study itself shows evidence that emotions can be unconsciously triggered and that there are cases of truly “unconscious” or “unfelt” emotion. It is likely that consciousness represents a graded level of awareness ranging from highly conscious and know, to subliminal to highly unconscious and repressed part of our inner psychic lives.

References:

Monahan, J. L., Murphy, S. T., & Zajonc, R. B. (2000). Subliminal mere exposure: Specific, general and diffuse effects. Psychological Science, 11, 462–466.