1

Are there any unconscious emotions? An enactive approach.

KNEW 2013Leon Ciechanowski

Warsaw University, Philosophy Department;University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Psychology

Department

2

Crucial for social interactions and behaviour

Play a vital role in: Cognition: the role of affect (e.g., Duncan &

Barrett, 2007) Social cognition and intelligence; e.g.,

(Björkqvist, Österman & Kaukiainen, 2000) – empathy regulates social behaviour

Emotions

3

Emotions can be unconscious Emotions cannot be unconscious Enactive approach to unconscious emotions The case study of empathy (socially

significant emotion) Evaluation and summary

Structure of the talk

4

There are at least some elements of emotions that are unconscious

The dispute over unconscious emotions depends on the assumed definition of emotion

There may be a ground where we could solve the dispute

There are some problems with these grounds

Claims of the talk

5

Zajonc (1994) – free-floating anxiety phenomenon

Winkielman, Berridge and Wilbarger (2005) – rejection of ’what-it’s-like’ aspect of emotion.

”Conscious aspects of emotion probably emerge from a hierarchy of unconscious emotional processes…” (2005: p. 336)

Emotions can be unconscious

6 Winkielman, Berridge

& Wilbarger (2005b)

Emotions can be unconscious

7

Emotions can be unconscious

Winkielman, Berridge & Wilbarger (2005b)

8

Emotions can be unconscious

Winkielman, Berridge & Wilbarger (2005b)

9

Clore (1994) – we mistake emotions for unconscious affects or moods

Emotions require feelings and these are conscious by definition: Traditional accounts (James-Lange theory) Cognitive theories of emotions

A ’middle way’ – Joseph LeDoux (1994; 1995); Antonio Damasio (1994; 1999)

Emotions cannot be unconscious

10

The Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology: “A reaction, both psychological and physical,

subjectively experienced as strong feelings, many of which prepare the body for immediate action”

Encyclopaedia Britannica: “emotion, a complex experience of consciousness,

bodily sensation, and behaviour that reflects the personal significance of a thing, an event, or a state of affairs.”

Definitions of emotions

11

The MIT Encyclopedia Of The Cognitive Sciences: “An emotion is a psychological state or process that

functions in the management of goals. It is typically elicited by evaluating an event as relevant to a goal; it is positive when the goal is advanced, negative when the goal is impeded. The core of an emotion is readiness to act in a certain way…; it is an urgency, or prioritization, of some goals and plans rather than others. Emotions can interrupt ongoing action; also they prioritize certain kinds of social interaction, prompting, for instance, cooperation or conflict.”

Definitions of emotions

12

Emotions do not simply go along action-reaction patterns.

Emotional content and feelings emerge due to performing action patterns constrained by environmental affordances.

Two types of intentionality of emotions: emotions directed toward our bodies emotions directed toward the world

Enactive approach to unconscious emotions

13

Emotion: a monitoring process that informs an organism

about its surrounding affordances and whether the organism is successful in using them.

provides motivated patterns for the realization of a self-organizational balance.

is not reducible to a homeostatic seeking reorganization of patterns.

consists of many motivations, that are arranged, balanced and chosen by an individual.

Enactive approach to unconscious emotions

14

strongly correlated with social intelligence; acts as a mitigator of aggression and impacts on our conflict behaviour (Björkqvist, Österman, & Kaukiainen, 2000)

empathy deprivation leads to serious disorders (Spitz & Wolf, 1946)

the capacity for empathy in children is developed as a result of relations with their mothers (Siegal, 1985)

unconscious affective (emotional?) processes lead to empathy (Decety & Ickes, 2009; Yamada & Decety, 2009)

Empathy

15

conscious vs. unconscious emotions – a theoretical deadlock?

Interoception – a problem enactivism: it is the emotion’s intentionality

that makes us aware of them, and not the interoceptive element. but: enactivist problem of definition of emotion

Evaluation

16

Accept the situation

OR

Try to find a common ground for different theories

What can we do?

17

Piotr Winkielman , Kent Berridge , and Shlomi Sher (2011) what qualitative patterns of functional

organization across the cortical and subcortical areas are likely to trigger conscious and unconscious emotion?

they employ the “global workspace” model of functional organization of conscious states (Baars, 1988)

Finding a common ground

18

Can emotion be unconscious? -> To what extent can various subsets of processors in the neural emotion network operate in an internally coherent fashion, without themselves being integrated with the various other processors in the global workspace?

Finding a common ground

19

Experimental data: Rating neutral Chinese ideographs preceded

by subliminal happy or angry faces (Winkielman, Zajonc, & Schwarz, 1997)

Studying consumption behavior after exposing participants to several subliminal emotional facial expressions (Winkielman, Berridge, and Wilbarger, 2005)

Study on more complex financial decisions (Winkielman, Knutson, Paulus, & Trujillo, 2007).

Finding a common ground

20

Finding a common ground

Winkielman, Zajonc, & Schwarz (1997)

21

maybe we do not talk here about unconscious emotions but about unconscious affect?

the difficulty of conclusively establishing the absence of feelings

Problems of the global workspace approach

22

Bibliography:Baars, B. J. (1988). A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness. Cambridge University Press.Björkqvist, K., Österman, K., & Kaukiainen, A. (2000). Social intelligence − empathy = aggression? Aggression and Violent Behavior, 5(2).Clore, G. L. (1994). Why Emotions Are Never Unconscious. In P. Ekman & R. J. Davidson (Eds.), The Nature of Emotion: fundamental questions. Oxford

University Press.Damasio, A. (1994). Descarte’s error. Putnam.Damasio, A. (1999). The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. Harcourt.Decety, J., & Ickes, W. (Eds.). (2009). The Social Neuroscience of Empathy. The MIT Press. Duncan, S., & Barrett, L. F. (2007). Affect is a form of cognition: A neurobiological analysis. Cognition & emotion, 21(6), 1184–1211.LeDoux, J. E. (1994). Emotional Processing, but Not Emotions, Can Occur Unconsciously. In P. Ekman & R. J. Davidson (Eds.), The Nature of Emotion:

fundamental questions. Oxford University Press.LeDoux, J. E. (1995). Emotion: Clues from the brain. Annual review of psychology, 46, 209–35.Siegal, M. (1985). Mother-child relations and the development of empathy: A short-term longitudinal study. Child Psychiatry & Human Development,

16(2), 77–86. Solomon, R. C. (2013). emotion. In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/185972/emotionSpitz, R. A., & Wolf, K. M. (1946). Anaclitic depression; an inquiry into the genesis of psychiatric conditions in early childhood. The Psychoanalytic

study of the child, 2, 313–42. Strickland, B. R. (Ed.). (2001). The Gale encyclopedia of psychology. Gale Group. Wilson, R., & Keil, F. (Eds.). (1999). The MIT encyclopedia of the cognitive sciences. The MIT Press. Winkielman, P., & Schooler, J. W. (2011). Splitting consciousness: Unconscious, conscious, and metaconscious processes in social cognition. European

Review of Social Psychology, 22(1), 1–35. Winkielman, P., Berridge, K. C., & Wilbarger, J. L. (2005a). Emotion, Behavior, and Conscious Experience: Once More without Feeling. In L. F. Barrett, P.

M. Niedenthal, & P. Winkielman. (Eds.), Emotion and consciousness. The Guilford Press.Winkielman, P., Berridge, K. C., & Wilbarger, J. L. (2005b). Unconscious affective reactions to masked happy versus angry faces influence

consumption behavior and judgments of value. Personality & social psychology bulletin, 31(1), 121–35. Winkielman, P., Knutson, B., Paulus, M., & Trujillo, J. L. (2007). Affective influence on judgments and decisions: Moving towards core mechanisms.

Review of General Psychology, 11(2), 179–192.Winkielman, P., Zajonc, R. B., & Schwarz, N. (1997). Subliminal Affective Priming Resists Attributional Interventions. Cognition & Emotion, 11(4), 433–

465. Yamada, M., & Decety, J. (2009). Unconscious affective processing and empathy: an investigation of subliminal priming on the detection of painful

facial expressions. Pain, 143(1-2), 71–5. Zajonc, R. B. (1994). Evidence for Nonconscious Emotions. In P. Ekman & R. J. Davidson (Eds.), The Nature of Emotion: fundamental questions. Oxford

University Press.

Thank you!