This article focuses on Bob Zajonc’s views on unconscious emotion, especially in the context of the debates about the independence of affect and cognition. Historically, Bob was always interested in the “mere”—basic, fundamental processes. His empirical demonstrations of precognitive and preconscious emotional processes, combined with his elegant expositions of them, sharply contrasted with cold and complex cognitive models. Interestingly, Bob tended to believe that whereas the causes of emotion can be unconscious, the emotional state itself tends to be conscious. However, (...) he reconsidered this assumption and in his later work showed that subjects in affective priming experiments do not experience conscious affect, but instead act on basic preferences. Today, Bob’s insights continue to inspire research on “unconscious emotion.”. (shrink)

Using a classical conditioning technique, this study investigated whether nonconscious associative learning could be indexed by event-related brain activity . There were three phases. In a preconditioning baseline phase, pleasant and unpleasant facial schematics were presented in awareness . A conditioning phase followed, in which stimuli were presented outside awareness , with an unpleasant face linked to an aversive shock and a pleasant face not linked to a shock. The third, postconditioning phase, involved stimulus presentations in awareness . Evidence for (...) acquisition of a conditional response was sought by comparing suprathreshold pre- and postconditioning phases, as well as in the subthreshold conditioning phase itself. For the pre-postconditioning phase analyses, significant ERP component differences differentiating CS+ and CS− were observed for N1, P2, and especially P3. For the conditioning phase, significant differences were observed in the 100–400 ms. post-stimulus region reflecting a CS+ processing negativity. Brain activity does indeed index the acquisition of a conditional response to subthreshold stimuli. Associative learning can occur outside awareness. (shrink)

Using a classical conditioning technique, this study investigated whether nonconscious associative learning could be indexed by event-related brain activity . There were three phases. In a preconditioning baseline phase, pleasant and unpleasant facial schematics were presented in awareness . A conditioning phase followed, in which stimuli were presented outside awareness , with an unpleasant face linked to an aversive shock and a pleasant face not linked to a shock. The third, postconditioning phase, involved stimulus presentations in awareness . Evidence for (...) acquisition of a conditional response was sought by comparing suprathreshold pre- and postconditioning phases, as well as in the subthreshold conditioning phase itself. For the pre-postconditioning phase analyses, significant ERP component differences differentiating CS+ and CS− were observed for N1, P2, and especially P3. For the conditioning phase, significant differences were observed in the 100–400 ms. post-stimulus region reflecting a CS+ processing negativity. Brain activity does indeed index the acquisition of a conditional response to subthreshold stimuli. Associative learning can occur outside awareness. (shrink)

This article reports four subliminal perception experiments using the relationship between confidence and accuracy to assess awareness. Subjects discriminated among stimuli and indicated their confidence in each discrimination response. Subjects were classified as being aware of the stimuli if their confidence judgments predicted accuracy and as being unaware if they did not. In the first experiment, confidence predicted accuracy even at stimulus durations so brief that subjects claimed to be performing at chance. This finding indicates that subjects's claims that they (...) are ''just guessing'' should not be accepted as sufficient evidence that they are completely unaware of the stimuli. Experiments 2-4 tested directly for subliminal perception by comparing the minimum exposure duration needed for better than chance discrimination performance against the minimum needed for confidence to predict accuracy. The latter durations were slightly but significantly longer, suggesting that under certain circumstances people can make perceptual discriminations even though the information that was used to make those discriminations is not consciously available. (shrink)

The adaptation-by-binding account and the arousal-biased competition model suggest that emotional arousal increases binding effects for transient links between stimuli and responses. Two highly-powered, pre-registered experiments tested whether transient stimulus-response bindings are stronger for high versus low arousing stimuli. Emotional words were presented in a sequential prime-probe design in which stimulus relation, response relation, and stimulus arousal were orthogonally manipulated. In Experiment 1 (N = 101), words with high and low arousal levels were presented individually in prime and probe displays. (...) In Experiment 2 (N = 170), a high arousing affective word was presented simultaneously with a neutral word during the prime display; in the subsequent probe display, either the arousing or the neutral word repeated or a different high versus low arousal word was shown. Data from both experiments did not demonstrate a modulation of SRBR effects by stimulus arousal and SRBR effects were of equal magnitude for word stimuli of high and low arousal levels. These null results are not in line with binding accounts that hypothesise a modulatory influence of emotional arousal on perception-action binding. (shrink)

A substantial body of research has established that even when we are not consciously aware of the faces of others we are nevertheless sensitive to, and impacted by their facial expression. In this paper, we consider this body of research from a new perspective by examining the functions of unconscious perception revealed by these studies. A consideration of the literature from this perspective highlights that existing research methods are limited when it comes to revealing possible functions of unconscious perception. The (...) critical shortcoming is that in all of the methods, the perceived facial expression remains outside of awareness. This is a problem because there are good reasons to believe that one important function of unconsciously perceived negative faces is to attract attention so that they are consciously perceived; such conscious perception, however, is never allowed with existing methodologies. We discuss recent studies of emotional face perception under conditions of visual search that address this issue directly. Further, we suggest that methodologies that do not examine cognitive processes as they occur in more natural settings may result in fundamental misunderstandings of human cognition. (shrink)

The evaluative priming paradigm aims to uncover the processes underlying evaluations. For this purpose, this paradigm presents a sequence of two or more stimuli varying on the valence dimension to which participants must provide a response. The “standard” evaluative priming effect is a relative facilitation of the required responses in congruent trials compared to incongruent trials. The following thesis argues that this evaluative priming effect depends on prime-target similarity, with higher similarity between prime and target leading to larger priming effects. (...) Part one of this thesis presents a meta-analysis of existing data, which tests evidence for the impact of similarity on evaluative priming effects. This reanalysis is based on the assumption that positive information is overall more similar to other positive information than negative information is to other negative information. Thus, this analysis compares effects of positive and negative prime-target pairs. The results confirm that positive prime-target pairs elicit stronger priming effects than negative prime-target pairs. This analysis involves a broad sample of stimuli and designs which supports the generalizability of this finding. However, the results are also in line with alternative interpretations attributing the valence asymmetries to other effects caused by valence. The following four experiments manipulate similarity either by selecting prime-target pairs based on pre-ratings or by presenting identical and non-identical prime-target pairs. All four experiments show that similar prime-target pairs create larger priming effects than dissimilar prime-target pairs. These findings have implications for our understanding of the evaluative priming paradigm, the use of evaluative priming as a measure of attitudes, and the conceptualization of the evaluative system. These implications will be discussed. (shrink)