Emotionally Directing Visual Sensations: I. Generating Images That Contextualize Emotion and Become “Symbolic”

Abstract

After being relaxed or aroused, 330 college students served as subjects in one of three imaging conditions. In the imaging condition with emotion induced first, subjects were instructed to generate an emotion, to envision an image, and to intensify the emotion while continuing to image. In the imaging condition with emotion induced later, other subjects were instructed to envision an image, to set it aside, to generate an emotion, to retrieve the image, and to intensify the emotion while continuing to image. In the imaging condition with no induced emotion, a third group of subjects envisioned an image without receiving any instruction to generate an emotion. Subjects' descriptions of their imagery were rated by two judges, initially, on scales of Symbolic Value and Bizarreness and, two months later, on scales of Obvious Contextualization and Emergent Contextualization. Symbolic Value ratings were positively correlated with Emergent Contextualization ratings and with Emergent/Obvious Contextualization ratios. Also, the imaging condition with “emotion induced later” yielded higher Symbolic Value ratings and higher Emergent/Obvious Contextualization ratios than the other two conditions. These quantitative findings, along with qualitative analyses of the imagery descriptions themselves, support the authors' hypothesis that symbolic imagery contextualizes emotion and, thereby, seems to “stand for” objects of emotion that are no longer present (but are not necessarily “unconscious”).