Implicit Learning of Emotional Structures

Abstract The present chapter focuses on unconscious emotional structures and on their implications for cognitive-behavior psychotherapies. It first overviews the fields of evaluative conditioning, fear conditioning, and reward learning, and concludes that some of the recent studies from these fields provide evidence for the possibility of acquiring unconscious knowledge structures with emotional relevance. It then summarizes the properties of unconscious structures, as they emerge from the past decades of research on implicit learning and conditioning: These structures result from direct experiences often abstracted over multiple similar situations, can produce conscious thoughts, and can be counteracted by creating alternative structures. It further analyzes the implications of these properties for cognitive-behavior psychotherapies. Finally, it provides theoretical and methodological suggestions that could increase the relevance of implicit learning research for CBTs.