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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.

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