CORE EMOTION AS “APRIORI” INTERNAL ANTICIPATORY MODELS: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Emotion processes, the psychological quality of being good or bad, activate a coordinated anticipatory model that is trigged as a coherent behavioural (somatic, vegetative and endocrine) and experiential subjective pattern (an internal model). Emotion processes integrate the externalist and the internalist anticipation. How these anticipatory patterns of specific emotion influence decision making can be studied at the level of nonconscious processing. Two studies using experimental paradigm of subliminal emotion stimulation combined experiential responses with electrofisiologic(ERPs)data where emotion-subliminal visual stimuli were presented forward and backward masked by abstract images(supraliminal), each linked to a specific emotion category. First, emotion categories were positive, negative, neutral and faint (a grey slide subliminally presented) and participants have chosen the mask associated to the faint condition as the most preferred and the mask associated with negative stimulation as the worst. These results raised the question about the factors which influenced subject’s choice. We tested the possibility of an effect of Arousal combining Positive and Negative valence with high and low arousal and the results indicate a preference for Positive Low Arousal stimulation. Positive high arousal was selected as the worst condition. In nonconscious stimulation subjects prefer low arousal positive or faint conditions–anticipating an agreeable interaction?