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Much heated debate surrounds the extent to which we can process emotional stimuli without awareness. In particular the extent to which masked emotional faces can elicit changes in physiology measurements, such as heart rate and skin conductance responses, has produced controversial findings. In the present study, we aimed to determine whether briefly presented faces can elicit physiological changes and, specifically, whether this is due to unconscious processing. We measured and adjusted for individual differences in the detection threshold using both receiver operating characteristics and hit rates. For this we also used a strict Bayesian assessment of participant thresholds. We then measured physiological responses to threshold adjusted emotional faces and for hits, misses and post-binary subdivisions of target meta-awareness. Our findings based on receiver operating characteristics revealed that, when faces were successfully masked there were no significant physiological differences in response to stimuli with different emotional connotations. In contrast, when targets were masked based on hit rates we did find physiological responses to masked emotional faces. With further analysis we found that this effect was specific to correct detection of angry and fearful faces and that increases in experienced arousal were associated with higher confidence ratings for correct detection of these stimuli. Collectively, our results do not support the notion of unconscious processing when using markers of physiological processes. Rather they suggest that target meta-awareness is a necessary condition for - and possibly determined by - physiological changes in response to masked emotional faces.

In this manuscript, the authors present an overview of the history, an account of the theoretical and methodological controversy, and an illustration of contemporary and revised methods for the exploration of unconscious processing. Initially we discuss historical approaches relating to unconsciousness that are, arguably, defamed and considered extraneous to contemporary psychological research. We support that awareness of the history of the current subject is pedagogically essential to understand the transition to empirical research and the reasons for which the current area is still so contentious among contemporary psychologists. We proceed to explore the current experimental canon. Contemporary theoretical and methodological issues relating to unconscious processing are discussed in detail and key issues and key advancements in contemporary research are presented. Developments that have, in recent years, being suggested to contribute to a possibly reliable method for the assessment of unconscious processing are practically -methodologically and statisticallyillustrated using easy-to-follow steps applied in real experimental data. Mindful of our own place in the long history of this topic, we conclude the manuscript with suggestions concerning the future of the current area.

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Psychological theory and research suggest that religious individuals could have differences in the appraisal of immoral behaviors and cognitions compared to non-religious individuals. This effect could occur due to adherence to prescriptive and inviolate deontic religious-moral rules and socioevolutionary factors, such as increased autonomic nervous system responsivity to indirect threat.The latter thesis has been used to suggest that immoral elicitors could be processed subliminally by religious individuals. In this manuscript we employed masking to test this hypothesis. We rated and pre-selected IAPS images for moral impropriety. We presented these images masked with and without negatively manipulating a pre-image moral label. We measured detection, moral appraisal and discrimination, and physiological responses. We found that religious individuals experienced higher responsivity to masked immoral images. Bayesian and hit-versus-miss response analyses revealed that the differences in appraisal and physiological responses were reported only for consciously perceived immoral images. Our analysis showed that when a negative moral label was presented, religious individuals experienced the interval following the label as more physiologically arousing and responded with lower specificity for moral discrimination. We propose that religiosity involves higher conscious perceptual and physiological responsivity for discerning moral impropriety but also higher susceptibility for the misperception of immorality.