It seems that people can be wrong about or unaware of many things, but at least they can be sure about their own emotions. Yet, psychologists challenge even that certainty and point out that one’s emotional life can be a mystery, even to oneself. The idea of nonconscious emotion proposes in its strongest form that people can be in an emotional state (as demonstrated by its impact on behavior, physiology, and cognition) without having any conscious awareness of being in that state.
无意识情绪的证据
Sigmund Freud的作品是关于情感与意识之间关系的一种猜测来源。Freud clearly believed that people can be wrong about the cause of their emotion (as when a person’s anger at his or her boss comes from the similarity of the boss to the person’s father) or the exact nature of their emotions (as when a person confuses love with hate). There is little empirical support for Freud’s most dramatic speculations. However, some evidence indicates that people can be mistaken about some aspects of their emotional states. For example, one study found that in phobic individuals, negative mood can be elicited by presenting them with fear-relevant snakes and spiders. Another study found that positive mood can be elevated by repeated subliminal presentation of simple geometric figures. Many studies demonstrated that arousal resulting from one source (e.g., crossing a bridge) can be mistaken as deriving from another source (e.g., romantic attraction).
Note, however, that in these studies, people were aware of their emotions (though not of the causes). Could an emotion itself be nonconscious? Among psychologists, the issue is somewhat controversial. Some researchers think that the presence of a conscious feeling (the phenomenal component of emotion) is necessary to call a state an emotion. Other researchers think that conscious feeling is only one aspect of emotion, and the presence of emotion can be detected in behavioral and physiological changes. The latter possibility is supported by several lines of evidence.
First, from the standpoint of evolution and neuroscience, at least some forms of emotional reaction should exist independently of subjective correlates. Evolutionarily speaking, the ability to have conscious feelings is a late achievement compared with the ability to have behavioral affective reactions to emotional stimuli. Basic affective reactions are widely shared by animals, including reptiles and fish, and at least in some species may not involve conscious awareness comparable with that in humans. After all, the original function of emotion was to allow the organism to react appropriately to positive or negative events, and conscious feelings might not always have been required.
基本情感反应所需的神经循环,例如对宜人感觉的积极反应或对威胁刺激的不喜欢反应,在很大程度上包含在皮质以下的情绪大脑结构中,例如伏伏核,杏仁核,杏仁核,下丘脑和下丘脑和下丘脑,以及下丘脑和下去甚至较低的脑干。与大脑顶部精心制作的人类皮质相比,这些皮层结构早期进化,并可能进行实质上具有前意识的有限操作,这更涉及有意识的情感感觉。然而,即使是有限的亚皮质结构,也能够产生一些基本的情感反应。这一点的戏剧性证明来自与脑脑人类婴儿的情感神经科学研究。这种婴儿的大脑在先天性上畸形,只有脑干,几乎缺少大脑顶部或前面的所有结构,包括整个皮质。然而,甜糖的甜味仍然引起类似于脑脑婴儿喜欢的积极面部表情,而苦味会引起类似于厌恶的负面面部表情。
Even in normal brains, the most effective “brain tweaks” so far discovered for enhancing basic related affective reactions all involve deep brain structures below the cortex. Thus, animal studies have shown that liking for sweetness increases after a drug that activates opioid receptors is injected into the nucleus accumbens (a reward-related structure at the base of the front of the brain). Liking reactions to sugar can even be enhanced by injecting a drug that activates other receptors into the brain stem, which is perhaps the most basic component of the brain. Such examples reflect the persisting importance of early-evolved neurocircuitry in generating behavioral emotional reactions in modern mammalian brains. In short, evidence from affective neuroscience suggests that basic affective reactions are mediated largely by brain structures deep below the cortex, raising the possibility that these reactions might not be accessible to conscious awareness.
但是,动物和脑部受损患者的神经科学证据本身仅暗示着无意识的情绪的想法。幸运的是,典型个体中有一些无意识的情绪的证明。一项研究探索了一个范式中的无意识情绪,参与者评估了可见的中国意识形态,然后是潜意识的快乐或愤怒的面孔。尽管潜意识的面孔影响了意识形态的评分,但在实验否认经历了他们有意识的感觉的任何变化之后,参与者接受了采访。此外,即使要求参与者的判断力,即使他们被要求不以意识形态的判断为基础,他们的判断仍然受到潜意识的影响。甚至是无意识情绪的更好证据来自一项研究,表明参与者无法同时报告有意识的感觉,同时又表明了情感反应的存在。具体而言,在这项研究中,参与者被呈现一系列快乐,中立或愤怒的情感表情。潜意识诱导后,一些参与者立即对自己的有意识的感觉(情绪和唤醒)进行了评价,然后倒了自己,并消费了一种新颖的果实饮料。其他参与者首先倒了一杯饮料,然后对他们有意识的感觉进行了评价。结果表明,无论任务顺序如何,有意识的感觉的评分都不受潜意识的面孔的影响。 Yet, participants’ consumption behavior and drink ratings were influenced by subliminal affective stimuli, especially when participants were thirsty. Specifically, thirsty participants poured more drink from the pitcher and drank more from their cups after happy, rather than after angry, faces. In short, these results suggest a possibility of nonconscious emotion in the strong sense—a reaction powerful enough to alter behavior, but of which people are simply not aware, even when attending to their feelings.
Nonconscious Emotion Implications
因此,似乎在某些情况下,一个人可以在没有任何意识的情况下进行情感反应。这种现象具有一些重要的含义。例如,从定义上,无意识的情绪几乎很难控制,从而提高了通过足够强大的刺激来改变行为而不会影响意识的感觉的可能性。从临床上讲,无意识的情绪的想法与某些类型的精神疾病有关,例如静脉症,其特征是无法获得或描述自己的感受。如果没有意识,情绪行为可能发生的可能性也引发了一些令人不安的问题,例如面部或身体情绪表达(包括疼痛的患者)反映了无意识的情绪程序的活动或一些最小的意识。
The existence of nonconscious emotional reactions does not mean that conscious feelings are epiphenomenal—which means an interesting but unnecessary “icing on emotional cake” that plays little role in controlling behavior. Clearly, conscious feelings play an important function in what people do and deserve a central place in emotion research and clinical practice. However, the research suggests that many aspects of what is called emotion may be separable from conscious feeling, and that researchers and practitioners of emotion science should not limit themselves to self-reports of subjective experiences when assessing the presence of emotion.
未来的研究需要解决一些关键问题。首先,无意识的国家可能仅在积极的价值上是主要区分的,而不是在与特定情绪(恐惧,愤怒,厌恶等)相关的更定性方面进行区分。一些证据表明,皮层循环能够具有定性的分化,研究可以测试是否可以在不带有意识的情况下引起不同的情绪行为。其次,这里讨论的人类研究依赖于简单且知名的刺激,例如潜意识的面部表情。未来的研究应解决复杂的,文化编码的刺激是否也可以在不伴随感受的情况下引起视频的行为变化。最后,未来的工作应检查哪些确切的心理和神经机制决定了情绪反应是无意识还是伴有有意识的感觉。关于非意识情绪的科学研究刚刚开始,不久的将来肯定会带来许多激动人心的发现。
参考:
- Damasio, A. R. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace.
- Ohman,A.,Flykt,A。和Lundqvist,D。(2000)。无意识的情绪:进化观点,心理生理数据和神经心理学机制。在R. D. Lane,L。Nadel和G. Ahern(编辑)中,情感的认知神经科学(第296-327页)。纽约:牛津大学出版社。
- Winkielman, P., & Berridge, K. C. (2004). Unconscious emotion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 120-123.