Specific Nonconscious Emotions and Behavior 1 Running Head: SPECIFIC NONCONSCIOUS EMOTIONS AND BEHAVIOR Effects of Specific, Nonconscious Emotions on Self-Control Behavior

Current empirical evidence regarding nonconscious emotion is limited to positively versus negatively valenced affect. This paper demonstrates that specific, equally valenced emotions can be subliminally primed, remain inaccessible to conscious awareness, and still differentially affect behavior. In experiments 1 and 2 participants subliminally primed with a guilty emotion show higher self-control on both a guiltypleasure and a grim-necessity self-control task than participants subliminally primed with a sad emotion. Participants in these different emotion conditions show no differences in their conscious emotion ratings. Experiments 3 and 4 added a time delay manipulation and replicated these findings, suggesting that the effects of nonconscious emotions found in this research are not purely semantic but also have a motivational component.