Category: Psychology

One of the main points I took away from the discussion on unity is that psychology needs to integrate results from different methodologies in order to better understand psychological phenomena. The emotions are a prime example of where this is happening, perhaps because the late blooming of emotion research has coincided with the explosion of brain imaging paradigms. And so the term ‘affective neuroscience’ has come into it’s own. This post asks whether there’s any justification for separating affective neuroscience from cognitive neuroscience.

The term ‘affective neuroscience’ was coined by Jaak Panksepp in the early 1990s to distinguish it from cognitive neuroscience. Panksepp explains his view that affect or feelings are:

“…distinct neurobiological processes in terms of anatomical, neurochemical, and various functional criteria, including peripheral bodily interactions. Emotional and motivational feelings are unique experientially valenced ‘state spaces’ that help organisms make cognitive choices – e.g., to find food when hungry, water when thirsty, warmth when cold, and companionship when lonely or lusty.” (Panksepp, 2003:6)

Panksepp departs from LeDoux who, you’ll recall (if not go here), thinks conscious emotions are too bound up in the problem of consciousness to be currently amenable to sensible investigations. Panksepp, meanwhile, argues that ‘affect’, by definition consciously experienced emotion, is important in the study of emotions.

That aside, one of the most important points that Panksepp (2003) addresses is the question of whether affects and cognitions can be separated in any meaningful way. He argues that while it may not be possible untangle cognitions from affect, there is considerable utility in examining the way in which it is ’embodied’. And here lies an important role for the neuroimaging of humans and animal brain research.

So what evidence is there, for Panksepp (2003), that emotions and cognitions can be separated?

1. From a considerable amount of research, there seem to be emotional processes that are completely separate, or independent of, pure cognitions.
2. Removing the higher parts of animal’s brains (decortication) still leaves them with affective responses. Put crudely: without their cortexes, animals can still feel, but can’t think anymore.
3. Young children appear to display greater emotionality than adults. This might suggest that higher processes, developed later in life, serve to ‘dampen’ evolutionarily programmed emotional processes.
4. Cognition is digital and emotion is analogue.
5. Emotions are broadly similar cross-culturally, cognitions are not.
6. The right hemisphere of the brain seems more emotionally-skilled whereas the left is more cognitively-skilled.

Even taken together these points do not prove that affects and cognitions are separate entities, but they do suggest some separation between processes. From the opposite perspective, it is clear that affects and cognitions, while their distinctiveness is being argued here, are massively and necessarily interrelated. Thinking evolutionarily, our cognitions need our emotions and vica versa. A head is no use without a heart to go with it. That doesn’t mean there isn’t considerable utility in analysing each separately.

In the reality of everyday research, Panksepp (2003) argues, it is useful to emphasise the distinction between affects and cognitions if only to encourage a greater focus on emotion.

Panksepp, J. (2003). At the interface of the affective, behavioral, and cognitive neurosciences: Decoding the emotional feelings of the brain. Brain and Cognition, 52(1), 4-14. (Abstract)

Having introduced the idea of the emotional unconscious in the last post, I am going to dive straight into some of the research which attempts to prove its existence. Kent Berridge at the University of Michigan has carried out some interesting research into the emotional unconscious. But despite some good evidence, Berridge & Winkielman (2003) make the point that the existence of unconscious emotions is still controversial.

This is made clear by the caution with which Berridge Winkielman (2003) discuss the idea when introducing their own studies. Like LeDoux (1996), Berridge & Winkielman (2003) point to the way in which emotion has often been defined as requiring a conscious component.

In the first study Berridge & Winkielman (2003) report, Winkielman, Berridge & Wilbarger (2000) exposed participants to subliminal emotional cues in facial expressions while they thought they were engaged in a study about gender. They then allowed their participants to ‘interact’ with a fruit-flavoured drink.

The results showed that those who were thirsty and exposed to happy faces drank 50% more of the drink than neutrally primed participants. The mirror effect was seen for the negative-primed participants. Importantly, participants were not aware of the priming and were not aware of being in a better or worse mood depending on their priming condition. Further, the priming conditions had no effect on participants who weren’t thirsty.

A similar paradigm was used in Winkielman et al.’s (2000) second study. Here, though, instead of focussing on the amount of drink, participants evaluated the drink. Again, the subliminal priming had the same effect on subjective ratings of the drink. But, this time participants completed a 20-item PANAS scale before and after the subliminal priming and no differences were found.

These two studies certainly look like they provide useful evidence for the emotional unconscious, but Berridge & Winkielman (2003) consider an alternative explanation. Perhaps the unconscious information participants were primed with was purely cognitive. This would explain why participants did not report any affective changes – there hadn’t been any. Berridge & Winkielman (2003) argue, however, that this interpretation is not consistent with other evidence. This research suggests that facial expressions do indeed induce an affective response as shown on behavioural or physiological measures, e.g. activation of the amygdala.

But, if this line of argument isn’t convincing, then Berridge & Winkielman (2003) argue that a particular order manipulation in their study provides further evidence of an affective rather than cognitive process. Some participants, after subliminal priming focussed their attention on themselves, while other participants focussed on the drink. If the priming was cognitive, in the form of a ‘free-floating belief’, there should have been a difference between these two conditions. This effect was not seen, suggesting the process was affective.

Winkielman et al.’s (2000) studies certainly provide some useful preliminary evidence to support the idea of the emotional unconscious.

Berridge, K., Winkielman, P. (2003). What is an unconscious emotion? (The case for unconscious “liking”). Cognition Emotion, 17(2), 181-211. (Abstract)

LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain: the mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. London: Simon Schuster.

Winkielman, P., Berridge, K., Wilbarger, J. (2000). Unconscious affect for doing without feeling: Subliminal facial expressions alter human consumption. Unpublished manuscript