Unconscious emotional processing

• Published in: Food quality and preference Vol. 92; p. 104177
• Main Authors: Sander, David, Delplanque, Sylvain
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.09.2021
• Subjects: emotions; food choices; food quality
• ISSN: 0950-3293; 1873-6343
• DOI: 10.1016/j.foodqual.2021.104177

•We discuss the construct of “unconscious emotion” introduced in Thomson and Coates’ opinion paper.•Emotions are conscious because they involve a subjective experience.•Instead, we propose to use “unconscious emotional processes.”•Thomson and Coates’ methodology elegantly reveals implicit affective associations. In their opinion paper, Thomson and Coates mention that their title: “Are unconscious emotions important in product assessment? How can we access them?”, “presents several immediate challenges”. We agree, and we suggest that an interesting challenge already starts with the definition of what an unconscious emotion is. In particular, one may ask: what is unconscious in a so-called “unconscious emotion”? In this commentary, we first discuss the very construct of “unconscious emotion.” Then, we discuss this construct with respect to componential approaches to emotion, and we argue that the construct of “unconscious emotion” is subject to debate because the feeling component is typically considered as constitutive of an emotion. We conclude that it may be particularly useful for future research not to focus on “unconscious emotions” but rather on specific “unconscious emotional processes”, and how to measure them using a hypothesis-driven approach.