Implicit versus explicit measures of emotion processing in people with aggressive and impulsive tendencies and those who use pornography
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1
University of Newcastle, School of Psychology, Australia
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2
Priority Research Centre for Translational Neuroscience and Mental Health Research, Australia
Background: As researchers and clinicians are becoming more aware that many of our thought processes and behaviours occur beneath conscious awareness, the need to acquire methods to gain a better and more thorough understanding of unconscious emotional processes becomes more important. Researchers and clinicians in the behavioural sciences currently rely heavily on the use of self-report questionnaires and face-to-face interviews to ascertain an individual’s thoughts and behaviours. This conscious feedback which is given can often bely underlying unconscious processes which may provide a more accurate interpretation of an individual’s true emotions.
Methods: The current project aims to utilise self-report questionnaire data along with objective physiological measures such as Electroencephalography (EEG), Electromyography (EMG in the form of startle reflex modulation), Skin Conductance and Heart Rate to generate the awareness of discrepancies between self-reported and objectively measured emotions. We are looking at particular groups within the normal population who have not as yet been diagnosed with any psychological or neurological disorders, namely aggressive impulsive individuals and people who use pornography.
Results: Although we are at the initial stages of piloting, it is expected that individuals who are highly aggressive impulsive and high users of pornography will show an inhibited physiological response when presented with violent and pornographic images respectively when compared with those who are low impulsive aggressive and low users of pornography. At the same time, we hypothesise that the self-reported measures of these ‘high’ groups will be similar to those we expect to find in the low impulsive aggressive and low pornography user groups.
Discussion: The present project aims to deliver a set of empirically measured markers which may aid in understanding problem behaviours at its roots which may be at non-conscious processing levels. Additionally, it is believed that knowledge about such discrepancies may aid clinicians to better understand and predict behaviour in these groups.
Keywords:
impulsive aggressive,
Pornography,
Implicit Measures,
startle reflex modulation,
Electroencephalography,
Violence
Conference:
ACNS-2013 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference, Clayton, Melbourne, Australia, 28 Nov - 1 Dec, 2013.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Other
Citation:
Kunaharan
S and
Walla
P
(2013). Implicit versus explicit measures of emotion processing in people with aggressive and impulsive tendencies and those who use pornography.
Conference Abstract:
ACNS-2013 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2013.212.00084
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Received:
25 Sep 2013;
Published Online:
25 Nov 2013.
*
Correspondence:
Prof. Peter Walla, University of Newcastle, School of Psychology, Newcastle, New South Wales, 2308, Australia, peter.walla@webster.ac.at