Psychological contagion (PC) involves the transfer and "snowballing" of emotions, perceptions, or behaviors within or across individuals, often through subtle, automatic, or unconscious mechanisms. This narrative review synthesizes cross-disciplinary evidence and proposes a mechanism-level Cascading-Resonance Model of PC. Drawing on neuroscience, social psychology, media studies, and diffusion theory, we identify nine mechanisms that instantiate a three-layer process involving individual resonance, interpersonal synchronization, and group-level cascade. We summarize empirical patterns across cross-modal domains, map mechanisms to observable indicators and intervention levers, as well as offer falsifiable propositions for measurement and platform-level testing. We further explore the role of contagion in modern-day controversies and anomalous experiences. Findings are preliminary and based on conceptual synthesis rather than exhaustive meta-analysis, so we highlight priority directions for causal, multilevel research and policy evaluation.

Alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by difficulties in recognizing and verbalizing emotions and the utilization of a cognitive style that is oriented toward external events, rather than intrapsychic experiences. Alexithymia is considered a vulnerability factor influencing onset and course of many psychiatric disorders. Even though emotions are, in general, elicited involuntarily and emerge without conscious effort, it is surprising that little attention in etiological considerations concerning alexithymia has been given to deficits in automatic emotion processing and their neurobiological bases. In this article, results from studies using behavioral or neurobiological research methods were systematically reviewed in which automatic processing of external emotional information was investigated as a function of alexithymia in healthy individuals. Twenty-two studies were identified through a literature search of Psycinfo, PubMed, and Web of Science databases from 1990 to 2016. The review reveals deficits in the automatic processing of emotional stimuli in alexithymia at a behavioral and neurobiological level. The vast majority of the reviewed studies examined visual processing. The alexithymia facets externally oriented thinking and difficulties identifying feelings were found to be related to impairments in the automatic processing of threat-related facial expressions. Alexithymic individuals manifest low reactivity to barely visible negative emotional stimuli in brain regions responsible for appraisal, encoding, and affective response, e.g. amygdala, occipitotemporal areas, and insula. Against this background, it appears plausible to assume that deficits in automatic emotion processing could be factors contributing to alexithymic personality characteristics. Directions for future research on alexithymia and automatic emotion perception are suggested.

This review proposes that implicit learning processes are the cognitive substrate of social intuition. This hypothesis is supported by (a) the conceptual correspondence between implicit learning and social intuition (nonverbal communication) and (b) a review of relevant neuropsychological (Huntington's and Parkinson's disease), neuroimaging, neurophysiological, and neuroanatomical data. It is concluded that the caudate and putamen, in the basal ganglia, are central components of both intuition and implicit learning, supporting the proposed relationship. Parallel, but distinct, processes of judgment and action are demonstrated at each of the social, cognitive, and neural levels of analysis. Additionally, explicit attempts to learn a sequence can interfere with implicit learning. The possible relevance of the computations of the basal ganglia to emotional appraisal, automatic evaluation, script processing, and decision making are discussed.

<h4>Introduction</h4>The clinical assessment of patients with Disorders of Consciousness (DoC), ranging from the Vegetative State (VS/UWS) to the Minimally Conscious State (MCS), remains a significant challenge in neurology. Gold-standard behavioral tools are prone to high misdiagnosis rates because they depend on overt motor responses, which may be masked by physical impairments. Consequently, there is an urgent need for objective neurophysiological biomarkers to identify residual awareness. Predictive Processing (PP) is a leading theory that views the brain as a hierarchical inference engine. Under this framework, the brain minimizes "prediction errors" between internal generative models and sensory inputs. Neural signatures of these errors, such as the Mismatch Negativity (MMN), provide a window into the brain's automatic modeling of environmental regularities, serving as a proxy for conscious processing.<h4>Objective</h4>This systematic review aims to identify and appraise peer-reviewed studies from the past 15 years that apply computational PP models to non-invasive brain signals in DoC patients. It synthesizes evidence for their diagnostic and prognostic utility and identifies methodological hurdles to clinical translation.<h4>Methods</h4>A systematic synthesis was conducted on 30 peer-reviewed studies. Data regarding population demographics (total <i>N</i>≈2045), paradigms, and computational methods, including multivariate pattern analysis and deep learning, were extracted and appraised.<h4>Results</h4>The evidence reveals a transition from simple waveform averaging to high-dimensional decoding of hierarchical prediction errors. Global information-sharing markers effectively distinguish conscious states, while the temporal progression of prediction error signatures in the early stages of coma demonstrates high specificity for predicting awakening.<h4>Conclusion</h4>Computational PP models offer a transformative path toward reducing misdiagnosis. Future research must prioritize 24-hour continuous monitoring and multimodal data fusion to translate these theoretical frameworks into viable bedside clinical tools.

Cognition and motivation in emotion. The role of cognition--and to some extent motivation--in emotion, the ways meaning is generated, unconscious appraising, and the implications of this way of thinking for life-span development are addressed. It is argued that appraisal is a necessary as well as sufficient cause of emotion and that knowledge is necessary but not sufficient. This position is examined in light of what is known about emotions in infants and young children, the effects of drugs on acute emotions and moods, and recent patterns of thought about the brain in emotions. The discussion of how meaning is generated is the core of the article. Automatic processing without awareness is contrasted with deliberate and conscious processing, and the concept of resonance between an animal's needs and what is encountered in the environment is examined. The idea that there is more than one way meaning is achieved strengthens and enriches the case for the role of appraisal in emotion and allows the consideration of what is meant by unconscious and preconscious appraisal and the examination of how they might work. Published in The American psychologist (1991)

physiological response to the presentation of stimuli. When this occurs, a non-conscious affective process takes the form of two control mechanisms: one Affect, in psychology, is the underlying experience of feeling, emotion, attachment, or mood. It encompasses a wide range of emotional states and can be positive (e.g., happiness, joy, excitement) or negative (e.g., sadness, anger, fear, disgust). Affect is a fundamental aspect of human experience and plays a central role in many psychological theories and studies. It can be understood as a combin In relation to perception, a type of non-conscious affect may be separate from the cognitive processing of environmental stimuli. A monohierarchy of perception, affect and cognition considers the roles of arousal, attention tendencies, affective primacy (Zajonc, 1980), evolutionary constraints (Shepard, 1984; 1994), and covert perception (Weiskrantz, 1997) within the sensing and processing of preferences and discriminations. Emotions are complex chains of events triggered by certain stimuli. There is no way to completely describe an emotion by knowing only some of its components. Verbal reports of feelings are often inaccurate because people may not know exactly what they feel, or they may feel several different emotions at the same time. There are also situations that arise in which individuals attempt to hide their feelings, and there are some who believe that public and private events seldom coincide exactly, and that words for feelings are generally more ambiguous than are words for objects or events. Therefore, non-conscious emotions need to be measured by measures circumventing self-report such as the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT; Quirin, Kazén, & Kuhl, 2009). Affective responses, on the other hand, are more basic and may be less problematic in terms of assessment. Brewin has proposed two experiential processes that frame non-cognitive relations between various affective experiences: those that are prewired dispositions (i.e. non-conscious processes), able to "select from the total stimulus array those stimuli that are causally relevant, using such criteria as perceptual salience, spatiotemporal cues, and predictive value in relation to data stored in memory" (Brewin, 1989, p. 381), and those that are automatic (i.e. subconscious processes), characterized as "rapid, relatively inflexible and difficult to modify... (requiring) minimal attention to occur and... (capable of being) activated without intention or awareness" (1989 p. 381). But a note should be considered on the differences between affect and emotion. Arousal is a basic physiological response to the presentation of stimuli. When this occurs, a non-conscious affective process…

This essay provides a neurobiological and neuroanatomical analysis of how the recently published Walla Emotion Model, with its neurobiologically grounded definitions, elucidates the evolutionary origin of affective processing from the sense of olfaction. The analysis first deconstructs the model's hierarchical framework, which distinguishes between rapid, non-conscious affective processing (neural activity coding for valence of stimuli), conscious, subjective feelings, and observable, communicative emotions. It then details the unique neuroanatomical pathway of the olfactory system, highlighting its most direct, subcortical connections to the limbic system (only two synapses) (shared subcortical network between olfaction and affection). The core argument presented is that this emotion model's definition of affective processing as being distinct from an emotion is a direct conceptual reflection of the ancient, hardwired, and survival-oriented function of olfaction. This link is substantiated by empirical evidence from studies on sniffing behavior, startle reflex modulation, and non-conscious physiological responses, all of which provide empirical evidence for a non-conscious, non-cognitive evaluation of olfactory stimuli. First, this essay concludes that a clear distinction between affective processing, feelings, and emotions offers a coherent framework that has the potential to resolve long-standing terminological ambiguities in the affective science. Second, it also aims at providing a paradigm for understanding the foundational role of a specific sensory modality in the evolution of our most primitive and yet so evident and impactful affective responses serving the adaptation of produced behavior in humans. Finally, some ideas for broader implications are mentioned.

A primitive, subconscious belieflike attitude which may contradict one's conscious beliefs.: #* #* #* #* #* {{quote-book|en|title=Race, Philosophy, and Film|page=22|url=https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1136250441|author=Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo; Dan Flory|year=2013|passage=In response, they pop out of the fiction and refuse to imagine as the movie invites them because, ex hypothesi, their nonconscious alief that white human beings are superior leads them to react automatically and in affect-laden ways to the contrary story and implicit appraisals that Rodriguez and his fellow artists present. Some of Machete’s viewers }}