Emotion and Defense: Study on Skin Response to Emotional Words - Prof. Delgado Sánchez Mat, Apuntes de Psicología

¡Descarga Emotion and Defense: Study on Skin Response to Emotional Words - Prof. Delgado Sánchez Mat y más Apuntes en PDF de Psicología solo en Docsity! EMOTIONALITY AND PERCEPTUAL DEFENSE BY ELLIOTT McGINNIES University of Alabama During the past decade, a number of experimental investigations have pro- gressively revealed the so-called "dy- namic," or motivational, aspects of perceptual behavior. No longer do we view perception as organized solely in terms of the structural characteristics of stimulus objects or the frequency with which the individual has been ex- posed to these objects. Perceptions are structured not only with respect to the limiting stimulus conditions, but also with regard to the possibilities of re- ward (11, 12), need fulfillment (1, 7), attitudinal orientation (10), potential anxiety (4), symbolic value (3), and release from tension (2), to mention just a few. In order to describe such facts as the perceptual selection and accentuation of valued objects and the elimination or distortion of inimical stimulus objects, it has been found con- venient to invoke mechanisms of sensi- tization, defense, and value resonance (10), vigilance (2), and primitivation (4). Finally, playing host to these varied and intricate functions is the "ego," in whose service, presumably, the various perceptual adjustments op- erate. It seems well established, then, that the perceptual "filtering" of visual stimuli serves, in many instances, to protect the observer as long as possible from an awareness of objects which have unpleasant emotional significance for him. Does this process, however, entirely insulate him from the emotion- provoking qualities of the stimulus situation? It is to this problem that the present discussion is addressed. If we view emotion essentially as a rnptivating condition of the individual (6), the critical nature of the relation- ship between emotion and perception becomes apparent. Emotion does ap- pear to represent a highly organized and directed state of the organism. Consequently emotion-inducing stimuli may be expected to initiate those per- ceptual responses which will be con- sistent with the general picture of emo- tional adaptation. Several exploratory investigations have indicated that the individual both perceives and reacts in a manner consistent with his emotional response to stimulation. That tension (defined as reactivity to threat, dep- rivation, or thwarting) will induce perceptual "accentuation" of objects previously associated with the anxiety- producing situation has been demon- strated by Bruner and Postman (2). More recently the same authors have shown that frustration, induced by sar- casm and criticism, will raise the per- ceptual thresholds of observers to tachis- toscopically-presented words. When, on the other hand, individuals are faced with stimulus objects which are not actually threatening, but which repre- sent for them areas of little interest or some antipathy, they also generally dis- play raised thresholds of recognition (10). This process of perceptual "screening" apparently is acquired by the individual as a technique for or- ganizing perceptions around value ex- pectancies so as to produce maximum reinforcement of those expectancies. One question intrudes repeatedly into interpretations of these experimental findings, namely: "How is a raised or lowered threshold of recognition for inimical stimulus objects accomplished before the observer discriminates them 244 EMOTIONALITY AND PERCEPTUAL DEFENSE 245 and is thereby made aware of their threatening character?" While the an- swer to this question will follow even- tually only from fuller knowledge of the neurophysiological processes under- lying perceptual response, detection of any one aspect of physiological reac- tion accompanying perceptual behavior should throw some light upon the proc- esses by which perceptual defense is effected. One might conjecture, for ex- ample, that stimuli of an appropriate sort will arouse autonomic reactions characteristic of anxiety or pleasure prior to conscious awareness of the na- ture of the stimulus. If this is the case, we might expect to find a change in galvanic skin response in reaction to visually presented stimuli with emo- tion-provoking connotations before the subject is able to report the exact na- ture of the stimulus. In short, auto- nomic reactivity may have a lower threshold to threat than do those neural systems which mediate consciousness. Study of such reactions, therefore, should hold significant possibilities for adding to our understanding of the process by which discriminatory evalua- tion of visually sensed objects is ac- complished before accurate perception occurs. THE EXPERIMENT Because of the ease and precision with which it can be measured, the galvanic skin response was selected in the present study as an index of emo- tionality1 in response to affectively- charged verbal symbols. A list of eleven neutral and seven critical, or emotionally toned, words was first de- vised. The words are listed in Table 1 in their order of presentation to the subjects. Exposure of the words was 1 The term "emotionality" is employed here in the sense of autonomic response without regard to presence or absence of phenomeno- logical content. TABLE 1 STIMULUS WORDS USED IN THE EXPERIMENT IN ORDER OF THEIR PRESENTATION TO EACH OBSERVER Critical, of emotional, words are in italics. apple dance raped child belly glass river whore sleep kotex broom stove penis music trade filth clear bitch accomplished by means of a Gerbrand's Mirror Tachistoscope, which allowed controlled variation of the exposure in- terval from .01 second upward. This was done silently, since exposure dura- tion in this apparatus is controlled by the activation of fluorescent tubes rather than by a shutter arrangement. Subjects in the experiment were eight male and eight female undergraduates drawn from an elementary psychology class at the University of Alabama. All were naive as to the purpose of the experiment. The procedure consisted, first, in seating the subject before the viewing mirror of the tachistoscope and strapping electrodes onto both his palms. These were connected in series with a potentiometric circuit described by Lacey and Siegel (5) for measuring galvanic skin response. A 32-centi- meter scale microammeter accurate to .5 per cent made it possible to read cur- rent changes of one microampere with precision. The subject's threshold was first determined for four trial words in order to accustom him to the apparatus and to allow his level of resistance to stabilize. In all cases, thresholds were determined by exposing the stimulus word once at .01 second, once at .02 second, etc. until it was correctly re- ported by the subject. Prior to experimentation, the sub- jects were told that they would be shown words which they might not be 248 ELLIOTT MCGINNIES ers were instructed to report whatever they saw, they characteristically volun- teered a number of pre-recognition "hypotheses" before recognition oc- curred. These were recorded and later analyzed in terms of four general re- sponse categories. In order to simplify and objectify as much as possible the coding of these perceptual "guesses," the content categories were limited to the following: (1) Structurally similar. Hypotheses coded under this heading resembled in structure the stimulus word. For ex- ample, the observer may have guessed trace for trade, or whose for whore. (2) Structurally unlike. Coded here were hypotheses that were unlike, or dissimilar, in structure to the stimulus word, as, for example, roared for belly, or ideal for glass. (3) Nonsense. This category in- cluded responses that simply had no dictionary meanings. Such would be the case in guessing egtry for kotex, or widge for stove. (4) Part. These were fractional, or incomplete, hypotheses consisting of any disconnected group of letters. Figure 3 shows the percentage of re- sponses in each of the content cate- gories made to neutral and critical stimulus words for the group of ob- servers as a whole. A Chi-Square test of independence between type of hy- pothesis and meaning of the stimulus words indicates a relationship signifi- cant below the .01 level of confidence. The tabulation of observed and theo- retical frequencies with the obtained value of Chi-Square is reproduced in Table 3. Inspection of Fig. 3 in the light of the statistical evidence reveals that the observers made proportionately more similar and part responses to the neutral words and proportionately more unlike and nonsense hypotheses to the critical words. An additional break- down of the nonsense category into re- Ito 1 30 1 8 20 10 ft I | NEUTRAL WORDS Y/j CRITICAL WORDS . - \ ^MM \ ^^MB v\\ 7/, SIMILAR PART UNLIKE NONSENSE FIG. 3. Percentage frequencies with which hypotheses to neutral and critical stimulus words appeared in the response categories. EMOTIONALITY AND PERCEPTUAL DEFENSE 249 sponses which were similar to and those which were unlike the stimulus word failed to reveal any difference in fre- quency of occurrence to neutral and critical words. For this reason it was concluded that more detailed analysis of the content of responses would be unwarranted and would merely intro- duce an additional degree of arbitrari- ness to the scoring of the pre-recognition guesses. The subjects were queried following the experimental session as to whether they had reported their perceptions of the words promptly and accurately. In all cases, they assured the experiment- ers that, with the occasional exception of the first charged word, they did not withhold or modify their verbal re- sponse because of reluctance to say the word. In measuring the GSR, then, we apparently were recording genuine pre-recognition reactions to the stimu- lus words. IMPLICATIONS FOR PERCEPTUAL THEORY Armed with the findings thus far re- ported, we can readdress ourselves to the problem of "discrimination without awareness," to employ a term used by J. G. Miller (8). It seems clear that emotional reactivity, as measured by the galvanic skin response, is an accompaniment of perceptual defense. The existence of such a state of af- fairs has previously been suggested by H. A. Murray who states that ". . . certain features of the object which the subject does not consciously perceive are nevertheless physically affecting his body, and though he may be unable to report upon these internal happenings, they are nevertheless affecting his con- scious appraisal of the object" (9, 312). Although Murray was speaking without laboratory evidence, his phras- ing of the matter in terms of emotional conditioning is essentially correct. TABLE 3 CHI-SQUARE TEST OF INDEPENDENCE BETWEEN STIMULUS WORDS AND RESPONSE CATEGORIES Theoretical frequencies are in parentheses. Similar Part Unlike Nonsense Neutral 89 (76.36) 79 (57.06) 83 (91.89) 62 (87.69) 313 Critical 93 (105.64) 57 (78.94) 136 (127.11) 147 (121.31) 433 182 136 219 209 746 x* = 31,26. P < .01. Early in life, most individuals learn that words like "whore" and "bitch" are socially taboo. Since, the use of such words by the child will generally result in chastisement by the parent, a conditioned emotional reaction to these verbal symbols is soon established. This pattern of conditioned emotional re- sponse may be considered one of fear or anxiety aroused by symbols having sexual, excretory, or otherwise unpleas- ant or "immoral" connotations. De- spite the fact that these words may be employed frequently at a later age, especially when communicating with members of one's own sex, the early emotional reaction persists, as revealed by the GSR, even when overt signs of anxiety or embarrassment are not ob- servable. Despite evidence of unconscious emo- tional arousal, perceptual defense against these anxiety-arousing symbols is still accomplished, as witnessed by the heightened limens of our observers when they were confronted with the charged words. This poses a prob- lem for neurophysiological explanation 250 ELLIOTT McGiNNiES which cannot be answered here. How- ever, we might consi4er two possibili- ties: Is the galvanic skin response pre- ceding recognition of critical words a result of "feed-back" from the cortical association centers? Or is autonomic response initiated as the visual im- pulses reach the optic thalamus? In this case, one might conjecture that "rerouting" of afferent activity then takes place in the several visual cen- ters so that cortical integration is ef- fectively modified in the direction of phenomenological distortion. Evidence for this latter hypothesis is found in the greater frequency of nonsense and unlike hypotheses in response to the charged words. Formulation of these pre-recognition perceptions represents tactics apparently designed to delay accurate recognition of the stimulus word. The relatively higher frequency of part responses to the neutral words, on the other hand, may indicate effort toward recognition. That is, hypothe- ses based upon the neutral words are not as frequently distorted into non- sense or structurally dissimilar percepts, but are based upon whatever fractional discriminations the observer can make. Such an explanation, of course, is ad hoc and is presented as such. It has been suggested to the author by Dr. Jerome Bruner that an alternative ex- planation of the findings might be sum- marized as follows: The "critical", words appear less frequently in print, and the in- crease in thresholds for these words is a function of their unfamiliarity. Greater "effort" is required to recognize them, and this, in turn, causes a heightened GSR to the critical words. Such an explanation, however, seems untenable on several grounds. First, the critical words are quite common in conversational usage despite their infrequent appearance in print. Second, there is no reason why unfamiliarity with these words should generate a preponderance of nonsense and structurally unlike hypotheses. Third, if GSR is merely an accompaniment of the increased effort expended in recognizing words which show higher thresholds, one should expect a correlation between mean GSR's and mean thresholds for both the neutral and critical words. Pearson r's were calculated in each case. Correlations of — .002 and + .077 were obtained be- tween mean GSR's and mean thresholds for the neutral and critical words respec- tively. Clearly, no significant relation- ship exists within the two groups of words between GSR and threshold. The results, therefore, may be viewed as reflecting genuine emotional response rather than mere autonomic reactivity accompanying effort at recognition. Perceptual defense apparently is based upon conditioned avoidance of unpleasant or dangerous stimulus ob- jects. That the individual actually discriminates the stimulus before he fully perceives it is evident in his in- creased emotionality before recognition. Inimical stimuli, then, may serve as cues which are appropriately evaluated by the central nervous system even though integration of the afferent im- pulses is such as to delay recognition, either through distortion or an increase in threshold or both. Almost without exception, the galvanic skin response of the observers was greatest following the final exposure of the critical words; that is the one during which recognition occurred. Clearly, the process of per- ceptual defense is designed to delay the greater anxiety that accompanies actual recognition of the stimulus. As sug- gested previously, some integrational processes may occur at the thalamic level which are effective in delaying or modifying cortical integration of visual patterns, while at the same time caus- ing autonomic reaction to emotionally meaningful stimuli. The conditioned response, anxiety, is not entirely cir- cumvented, even though perceptual avoidance is in some measure achieved.