Unconscious Self-processing: Subconscious, Unintentional or Subliminal?

Abstract

The existing evidence suggested that self-relevant information is processed in an implicit and automatic manner in many situations. Specifically, the present chapter makes a brief review of empirical evidences which suggest the existence of unconscious self-processing in the situations when the self-relevance of stimuli or task is not registered consciously. According to the characteristics of the existing demonstrations of unconscious self-processing, we classified them into three different categories: subconscious or unrecognized self-processing, unintentional self-processing and subliminal self-processing. Integrating evidence of all three categories, one can infer thereby the wide existence of self-processing which is not dependent on subjective activation or awareness of self, and the automatic nature of self-related cognitive or social cognitive processing. For such remarkable phenomena, further efforts must be made to reveal the cognitive mechanism, behavioral effect and neural correlates of the consciousness-independent self-processing, the results of which might contribute to the thorough understanding of the nature of human self.