Abstract:

The concept of unconscious emotion has developed from addressing subliminal emotional stimulus to emphasizing unawareness of emotional experience. To integrate the two different paths to explore unconscious emotion, Wiens model, an information-processing model of emotion was introduced. According to Wiens model, there exist two parallel approaches to understand unconscious emotion, which are “stimulus-focused approach” and “experience -focused approach“. The core ideas, empirical studies, theoretical debates, methodological challenges and the essences of unconscious emotion along the two separate ways were then reviewed. It is implied that by nature consciousness and unconsciousness of emotion might be complementary rather than contradictory to each other based on Wiens model. And the new approach to study unconscious emotion might be the “experience-focused approach“.The application and future direction of research on unconscious emotion were also discussed.

Key words: unconscious emotion, backward masking, subliminal emotion priming, stimulus-focused approach, experience-focused approach