What Is an Unconscious Emotion? (the Case for Unconscious``liking'')

Ever since William James, psychologists of emotion have tended to view affective states as intrinsically conscious. We argue that nonconscious affect also exists, and focus specifically on the possibility of unconscious``liking''. We present evidence that positive and negative affective reactions can be elicited subliminally, while a person is completely unaware of any affective reaction at all (in addition to being unaware of the causal stimulus). Despite the absence of any detectable subjective experience of emotion, subliminally induced unconscious``liking'' can influence later consumption behaviour. We suggest that unconscious``liking'' is mediated by specific subcortical brain systems, such as the nucleus accumbens and its connections. Ordinarily, conscious liking (feelings of pleasure) results from the interaction of separate brain systems of conscious awareness with those core processes of unconscious affect. But under some conditions, activity in brain systems mediating unconsciouscorèìiking'' may become decoupled from conscious awareness. The result is a genuinely unconscious emotion. We begin with apologies to William James for having stolen the title of our paper from his classic article, ``What is an emotion'' (James, 1884). Worse still, by inserting``unconscious'' as a modifier, our title distorts his concept of emotion in a way that renders it almost nonsensical. This is because an unconscious emotion was a contradiction in terms, according to James' (1884) definition. For James, emotion was a conscious experience or subjective feeling (PW) We are grateful to Antoine Bechara, Phoebe Ellsworth, and James Russell for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We also thank Daniel McIntosh, Bruce Pennington, Valerie Stone, and Julie Wilbarger for help on revision. Finally, we dedicate this paper to Robert Zajonc in thanks for inspiration and many stimulating discussions.