Seen and Unseen: How Anger’s Conscious and Unconscious Detection Relates to Its Subjective Experience

• DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/7gnyk_v1
• Publication Date: 2025-04-10T15:39:45Z
• Authors: Fátima Saraiva; Joana Fernandes P...; Susana Capela; Francisco Rosa; Catarina Fagundes; Marlene Nogueira; Natividade S. Cou...; Marieke Martens; catherine harmer; Adriana Sampaio; Liliana Capitao

Anger is a powerful emotion that plays key role in social interactions, but how it processed—especially outside of awareness—remains poorly understood. In this study, we examined individual differences subjective anger (state, trait, and expression styles) relate to the conscious non-conscious detection angry, fearful, happy, neutral facial expressions. Using two validated tasks (Facial Expression Recognition Task Continuous Flash Suppression), assessed 60 university students’ ability detect emotional faces. Results showed angry faces were consciously recognised faster more accurately than fearful faces, detected slowly under conditions. Notably, individuals with higher externalised better at recognising consciously, while those internalised slower relative fear. These findings suggest styles—internalising vs. externalising—are linked distinct perceptual biases. This study highlights need consider both unconscious processes when examining emotions like shape our perception world.