Unconscious Emotion

Abstract— Conscious feelings have traditionally been viewed as a central and necessary ingredient of emotion. Here we argue that emotion also can be genuinely unconscious. We describe evidence that positive and negative reactions can be elicited subliminally and remain inaccessible to introspection. Despite the absence of subjective feelings in such cases, subliminally induced affective reactions still influence people's preference judgments and even the amount of beverage they consume. This evidence is consistent with evolutionary considerations suggesting that systems underlying basic affective reactions originated prior to systems for conscious awareness. The idea of unconscious emotion is also supported by evidence from affective neuroscience indicating that subcortical brain systems underlie basic "liking" reactions. More research is needed to clarify the relations and differences between conscious and unconscious emotion, and their underlying mechanisms. However, even under the current state of knowledge, it appears that processes underlying conscious feelings can become decoupled from processes underlying emotional reactions, resulting in genuinely unconscious emotion.     

THE ROLE OF COGNITION AND FEELING IN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Abstract Inquiry into religious experience is informed by conceptualizations of emotion. Although a long history of theoretical and empirical work has provided considerable insight into the philosophical, psychological, and (more recently) neurobiological structure of emotion, the role of cognition and feeling in religious emotional states remains poorly conceived, and, hence, so does the concept of religious experience. The lack of a clear understanding of the role of emotion in religious experience is a consequence of a lack of an adequate interdisciplinary account of emotions. Our primary aim here is to examine the consequences of a properly interdisciplinary understanding of emotions for the analysis of religious experience. To this end, we note points of convergence between psychological, philosophical, and neuroscientific accounts of emotion and between such accounts and reports on the neurobiology of religious experience, in particular two recent human brain imaging studies. We conclude that emotions are richer phenomena than either pure feeling or pure thought and that, rightly understood, emotion affords religious experience its distinctive content and quality. Accordingly, we argue that religious experience cannot be reduced to pure feeling or pure thought. Rather, on our analysis, religious experience emerges as “thinking that feels like something.”     

Do Split Brains Listen to Prozac?

Abstract. Cognitive science challenges our understandings of self and freedom. In this article, adapted from a chapter in Minding God: Theology and the Cognitive Sciences (Peterson 2003), I review some of the scientific literature with regard to issues of self and freedom. I argue that our sense of self is a construct and heavily dependent on the kind of brain that we have. Furthermore, understanding the issue of freedom requires an understanding of the findings of cognitive science. Human beings are constrained to be free; our biology in no small way determines the kinds of freedom that we are able to have.     

作为人格维度的时间洞察力研究

时间洞察力是个体对于时间的认知、体验和行动(或行动倾向)的一种人格特质．本文从时间洞察力的研究途径,以及它与情绪、目标设定和学习动机等的关系出发,概述了作为人格维度的时间洞察力研究。     

Concurrent Validity Studies of the Facial Discrimination Task

We examined the concurrent validity properties of the Facial Discrimination Task (FDT), an instrument for the assessment of facial emotion recognition by comparing it with the widely used Pictures of Facial Affect (PFA). In Study 1, 100 adults with heterogeneous psychiatric diagnoses were administered items of the FDT Emotion Task, the FDT Age Task, and PFA. In Study 2, 25 normally developing preschool children were instructed to label happy, sad, or neutral facial expressions from the FDT and the PFA. Despite methodological differences between the two studies, very similar and high correlations were found between the FDT and the PFA overall correct scores (r = .79 and r = .77, respectively). The data suggest that the FDT and the PFA measure similar competencies in preschoolers and in adults with psychiatric disorders. This finding is important because it establishes the concurrent validity of the FDT in child and adult populations.     

Sources of Civic Orientation Among American Youth: Trust, Religiious Valuation, and Attributions of Responsibility

This study identified affective and cognitive factors predicting American 6th, 8th, and 10th graders' civic orientation, defined here as feelings of effective community service, conceptualizations of citizenship, and participation in student government. Independent variables included measures of interpersonal trust, valuation of religion, and individualistic versus collective action attributions of responsibility for solving social problems. Interpersonal trust predicted four out of the five outcome variables. Individualistic attribution of social responsibility was a predictor of running for student government office, and collective action attribution was a predictor of conceptualizations of citizenship. Religious valuation also predicted conceptualizations of citizenship as well as feelings of effective community service. For the most part, grade level did not play a significant role in predicting youth's civic orientation. Results are discussed in terms of the literature on social capital and developmental theory.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Real-Time Affective Reactions at Work

Based partly on Weiss and Cropanzano's (H. M. Weiss & R. Cropanzano, 1996) Affective Events Theory, hypotheses were stated about likely antecedents and consequences of positive and negative real-time affective reactions at work. Somewhat different antecedents and consequences were predicted for positive as opposed to negative affective reactions. Affective reactions were operationalized as the average of up to 50 reports of momentary positive and negative feelings collected at work over a 2-week period. Structural equation analyses suggest that the data are consistent with the theoretical model proposed. As expected, job characteristics and positive dispositional affectivity predict positive affective reactions, role conflict and negative affectivity predict negative affective reactions, positive affective reactions predict affective commitment and helping behavior, and intention to leave is predicted by attitudes rather than by affective reactions. The results are consistent with Affective Events Theory as well as with 2-domain models that propose different causes and consequences of positive versus negative affect.     

Sources of Bias in Memory for Emotions

How accurately can people remember how they felt in the past? Although some investigators hold that emotional memories are resistant to change, we review evidence that current emotions, appraisals, and coping efforts, as well as personality traits, are all associated with bias in recalling past emotions. Bias occurs as memories of emotional states are updated in light of subsequent experience and goals. Biased memories in turn influence future plans and emotions, and may contribute to the formation of enduring personality traits. People's memories for emotions provide highly condensed and accessible summaries of the relevance of past experiences to current goals.     

Regret in Decision Making

Decision research has only recently started to take seriously the role of emotions in choices and decisions. Regret is the emotion that has received the most attention. In this article, we sample a number of the initial regret studies from psychology and economics, and trace some of the complexities and contradictions to which they led. We then sketch a new theory, decision justification theory (DJT), which synthesizes several apparently conflicting findings. DJT postulates two core components of decision–related regret, one associated with the (comparative) evaluation of the outcome, the other with the feeling of self–blame for having made a poor choice. We reinterpret several existing studies in DJT terms. We then report some new studies that directly tested (and support) DJT, and propose a number of research issues that follow from this new approach to regret.     

高中生不良情绪状态的特点研究

采用问卷法对北京、新疆、重庆、浙江、河南共6015名高中生的不良情绪状态进行了研究.结果表明,高中生的焦虑、抑郁、孤独、敌对、恐惧等五种不良情绪的状态均处于中等程度,随着年龄的增长,高中生不良情绪的这五个方面表现出较为一致的变化特点:随着年龄的增长,其不良情绪的状态呈缓慢上升的变化趋势,高二学生的抑郁、孤独、敌对、恐惧等不良情绪状态显著高于高一学生;高三学生的五种不良情绪状态均略高于高二学生,但是未达显著性水平,高中阶段的五种不良情绪未出现显著的性别差异.