Emotions Below Our Radar

This weeks readings touched on the differences between conscious and unconscious emotional stimuli/experiences, ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’, and the importance of optimism. The topics addressed seemed to have value beyond improving our understanding of human behavior, they seemed to reveal information that could be useful to the development of techniques for improving health and overall quality of life. Although I was not thoroughly sold on all of the papers, they each succeeded to alter my perception and spark new questions.

Berridge challenged my theory of emotions in his article on unconscious emotions. Up until these readings I had been formulating a theory based on a notion that we have a significant amount of control over our emotions, and in denying this control we are shirking off some of our responsibility for our actions. While one may indeed act on behalf of an emotional impulse, the lack of control or awareness is due to conditioned responses, laziness, or pathological conditions (it is not our fault though, we are taught to be this way). Berridge and colleagues experimentally demonstrated an unconscious emotional response (that did not have any negative connotations). Using subliminal images and an open juice bar they were able identify what they considered to be emotional responses based on the subjects behavior (beverage consumption). While these responses were apparent to the trained eye, the subjects were reportedly unaware of their emotional displays. Although I do not quite understand the beverage consumption model, I trust that they had good reason.

Berridge and colleagues raised another issue that challenged my current understandings. They distinguish between ‘wanting’ ( which they also refer to as sensitized incentive salience, “an underlying implicit and subjective process”) and ‘liking’ (“an objective affective reaction”). With this distinction in mind, they attempted to investigate the differences between wanting and liking on a neurological level. They acknowledge that this concept may seem counterintuitive, and suggest that the differences in experience may be discrete and thus fall below our radar. They further suggest that irrational desires, desire for things that are not particularly pleasant, may be provoked by the wanting system and falsely interpreted as liking. The authors describe a case in which a certain factor (B-19) evoked a desire for further stimulation and sexual arousal, but did not evoke an orgasm or statements to the effect of “that feels good”. Thus, the desire for further stimulation was not due to the pleasantness/liking, but rather brain activity that causes irrational ‘wanting’.

Despite their observation of different neurological pathways that evoke distinct responses, I have trouble accepting their distinction between wanting and liking. Is there not some pleasure in the act of wanting? I do not see how you could want something in the absence of a foreseeable reward. In that case does the motivation for the ‘want’ not invoke a sense of pleasure in and of itself? Is sexual arousal not a pleasant feeling (even sans orgasm)? And is desire for further stimulation not indicative of an enjoyable experience, or an experience with some type of desirable reward? I understand how wanting is not always pleasurable, but can wanting occur without some foreseeable reward? We would not do something if we did not hope to get something pleasurable out of it (at least I cannot think of any examples). There must be some level of reward that seems worthwhile even in the unhealthiest of behaviors. Although I clearly remain dissatisfied by their distinction between ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’, this work does shed light on possible neurological underpinnings of drug addiction, eating disorders, obsession, and depression, and may be useful in developing methods for treating these disorders.