Reading Response

Hedonics/Reward

This week’s reading focuses on the mental processes of happiness, core affect of “liking” or “wanting”. Both of these were linked with the question of unconscious or conscious emotion. My main concern was with idea of an unconscious emotion, which I thought was hard to define and the experience of happiness.

The question of unconscious emotion was very striking to me. First of all it appears as though all emotions at one point can become conscious. Indeed because of the importance of feedback in the experience of emotion, it seems impossible for an emotion to be entirely unconscious; it always comes to consciousness some way or another. The only way it could stay unconscious is with subliminal images, which the article uses. In that case, I can understand how the emotion is unconscious and has a result (which is conscious) on one’s emotional experience. How can this translate in life experience? Can we talk about unconscious emotion without using subliminal images? What are some examples of unconscious emotion in everyday experience? How could it be studied? Can

The two positive psychology articles claimed that the positive aspect of our lives and psychology are often neglected or at least are not considered as important as the negative. In other words, we tend to pay more attention to what is not going right than to what is going well. Why do we have trouble seeing the good in things? What would our lives be without happiness? In general it seems as thought people more easily fall into seeing only the negative aspects of things. Why is that? How is it helpful? The author introduces an evolutionary explanation. It is good for us because we can protect ourselves, once again, it is associated with survival but isn’t happiness also good and essential for our survival? In general human beings tend to observe the negative aspects more frequently and easily. What does this question say about our society? Are we scared of what might be positive? Is it because it is easier to complain and find excuses than actually try and be happy? Another concern is that we obviously know what it is like to be too unhappy but can we talk about someone being too happy? And what are the consequences of such a phenomenon? The fact that usually being happy and realistic is opposed also says something about the way we view our lives and society. My next question concerns therapy, and positive psychology. A lot of my friends I have talked to about therapy usually see it as a waist of time and money. The article from positive psychology progress “Empirical Validation of Interventions” seems to think that therapy and psychology should not only be concerned with pathology but also with the positive aspects of our lives and mental health. “… our message is to remind our field that psychology is not just the study of pathology, weakness, and damage; it is also the study of strength and virtue” (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, p7).Can therapy be helpful for everyone? Could it prevent unhappiness or depression rather than just curing it?

In the next article “The Peculiar longevity of Things Not So Bad”, the authors talk about an interesting paradox. This paradox concerns the fact the affect of something not so bad will last longer than something very bad. The affect of something very bad will be stronger but we are able to deal with it in a better way and therefore it won’t stay as long as a strongly negative emotion. Something “not so bad” has a softer direct affect but it lasts longer, we can’t get ride of it as easily. The experiences presented in the article were done with people not knowing each other. I wondered if or how the results would change if something bad happened to someone we knew (and liked) or if someone we knew (and liked) did something to us? Will the fact that we car more influence the strength of the affect and the way one might deal with his or her feelings?