Snygg and Combs speak of a "narrowing of the perceptual field under tension," which means that when people are tense and anxious, they tend to be less observant and less aware of their environment. As these authors say, "the girl too concerned over her appearance entering a room is only too likely to be unaware of the disastrous carpet edge in her path."
There is likely to by many things that people do and think that they aren't aware of. I would say that each minute you have a few unconscious thoughts you aren't aware of. These thoughts probably influence your emotions in subtle ways. These thoughts are going to be influenced anxiety, arousal, your attention, (and, obviously, what is happening). There are obvious unconscious thoughts, such as something you might notice you missed later on, and there are (I believe) more subtle unconscious thoughts, a great level of detail in emotion and thought that occurs every second. Analyzing that level of what is going on I think could reveal more about what someone is feeling and thinking.
The following passage by Lindgren, Henry Clay
, shows how unconscious processes operate in everyday life.
- Even
though it constitutes a denial of reality, repression often servesa useful function in that it enables us to adjust more easily to the demands of life, relatively unhampered by unpleasant thoughts
and feelings and unaware of contradictions in our behavior. Itenables us to perform tasks and operations that would be difficult
or impossible if w e were bothered by recurring painful remindersof past faflures or by other disturbing thoughts and memories.
- ...our conscience or superego
plagues us with guilt feelings whenever w e indulge in thoughts andactions that run contrary to the accepted standards of our culture.
Tliese feelings often cause us to repress certain thoughts that might otherwise lead us to perform forbidden or disapproved acts.Some actions that are disapproved are violations of moral standards, while others involve certain patterns of behavior that are less acceptable than others. For example, there is a tendency in our culture to repress feelings that would lead to an emotional display. Under most circumstances w e disapprove of weeping in public, and this attitude leads us to repress feelings of deep sorrow, particularly when w e are with others. W e condone kissing in public on certain occasions, provided it is more or less formal and perfunctory. But if a nine-year-old girl throws her arms around her mother and effusively kisses her — sa\, on a streetcar or in a department store — the mother is likely to be embarrassed and to scold the child. These are examples of a cultural pattern which stresses emotional control and which regards the expression of strong emotions as babyish, immature, unmannerh', or even abnormal. Thus the typical American not only expresses less emotion than, say, the typical resident of the Mediterranean countries, but wfll often deny that he feels any emotion at all when faced by situations that would evoke considerable emotionality on the part of the Mediterranean person. In our " flight from emotion," w e often try to present ourselves as calm, reasonable, competent, and efficient persons, even though we may not feel this wa}'. W e stress the intellectual aspects of our behavior and attempt to deny to ourselves and others the presence of strong feelings.
- Unconscious feelings do not always reveal themselves through
such obvious means as a slip of the tongue. Usually they expressthemselves indirectly through subtle little mannerisms, quirks,
facial expressions, tones of voice, and so on.
