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Displaying results 1 to 15 of 15.

  1. The power of emotional valence – from cognitive to affective processes in reading
    Author: Menninghaus, Winfried; Lubrich, Oliver; Bohm, Isabel; Altmann, Ulrike; Jacobs, Arthur
    Published: 2012
    Publisher:  Frontiers Research Foundation

    Other ; The comprehension of stories requires the reader to imagine the cognitive and affective states of the characters. The content of many stories is unpleasant, as they often deal with conflict, disturbance or crisis. Nevertheless, unpleasant... more

     

    Other ; The comprehension of stories requires the reader to imagine the cognitive and affective states of the characters. The content of many stories is unpleasant, as they often deal with conflict, disturbance or crisis. Nevertheless, unpleasant stories can be liked and enjoyed. In this fMRI study, we used a parametric approach to examine (1) the capacity of increasing negative valence of story contents to activate the mentalizing network (cognitive and affective theory of mind, ToM), and (2) the neural substrate of liking negatively valenced narratives. A set of 80 short narratives was compiled, ranging from neutral to negative emotional valence. For each story mean rating values on valence and liking were obtained from a group of 32 participants in a prestudy, and later included as parametric regressors in the fMRI analysis. Another group of 24 participants passively read the narratives in a three Tesla MRI scanner. Results revealed a stronger engagement of affective ToM-related brain areas with increasingly negative story valence. Stories that were unpleasant, but simultaneously liked, engaged the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which might reflect the moral exploration of the story content. Further analysis showed that the more the mPFC becomes engaged during the reading of negatively valenced stories, the more coactivation can be observed in other brain areas related to the neural processing of affective ToM and empathy.

     
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    Source: BASE Selection for Comparative Literature
    Language: English
    Media type: Undefined
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 830; 430
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    info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
  2. "Old proverbs in new skins – an fMRI study on defamiliarization"
    Author: Altmann, Ulrike; Lubrich, Oliver; Bohm, Isabel; Menninghaus, Winfried; Jacobs, Arthur
    Published: 2012
    Publisher:  Frontiers Research Foundation

    Other ; We investigated how processing fluency and defamiliarization (the art of rendering familiar notions unfamiliar) contribute to the affective and esthetic processing of reading in an event-related functional magnetic-resonance-imaging... more

     

    Other ; We investigated how processing fluency and defamiliarization (the art of rendering familiar notions unfamiliar) contribute to the affective and esthetic processing of reading in an event-related functional magnetic-resonance-imaging experiment.We compared the neural correlates of processing (a) familiar German proverbs, (b) unfamiliar proverbs, (c) defamiliarized variations with altered content relative to the original proverb (proverb-variants), (d) defamiliarized versions with unexpected wording but the same content as the original proverb (proverb-substitutions), and (e) non-rhetorical sentences. Here, we demonstrate that defamiliarization is an effectiveway of guiding attention, but that the degree of affective involvement depends on the type of defamiliarization: enhanced activation in affect-related regions (orbito-frontal cortex, medPFC) was found only if defamiliarization altered the content of the original proverb. Defamiliarization on the level of wording was associated with attention processes and error monitoring. Although proverb-variants evoked activation in affect-related regions, familiar proverbs received the highest beauty ratings.

     
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    Source: BASE Selection for Comparative Literature
    Language: English
    Media type: Undefined
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 830; 430
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    info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
  3. Aesthetic and emotional effects of meter and rhyme in poetry
    Author: Obermeier, Christian; Menninghaus, Winfried; Koppenfels, Martin von; Raettig, Tim; Schmidt-Kassow, Maren; Otterbein, Sascha; Kotz, Sonja A.
    Published: 2013

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    Source: BASE Selection for Comparative Literature
    Language: English
    Media type: Undefined
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 890
    Subjects: meter; rhyme; emotion; aesthetics; cognitive fluency; poetry
    Rights:

    kostenfrei
  4. Mapping the aesthetic space of literature "from below"
    Author: Knoop, Christine Angela; Wagner, Valentin; Jacobsen, Thomas; Menninghaus, Winfried
    Published: 2016

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    Source: BASE Selection for Comparative Literature
    Language: English
    Media type: Undefined
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 800
    Subjects: Aesthetic appeal dimensions; Literary form; Terminological mapping; Empirische Ästhetik
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    kostenfrei
  5. Measuring optimal reading experiences : the reading flow short scale
    Author: Thissen, Birte; Menninghaus, Winfried; Schlotz, Wolff
    Published: 2018

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    Source: BASE Selection for Comparative Literature
    Language: English
    Media type: Undefined
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 810
    Subjects: flow; fiction reading; Reading Flow Short Scale; validity; reading pleasure
    Rights:

    kostenfrei
  6. Measuring aesthetic emotions : a review of the literature and a new assessment tool
    Author: Schindler, Ines; Hosoya, Georg; Menninghaus, Winfried; Beermann, Ursula; Wagner, Valentin; Eid, Michael; Scherer, Klaus R.
    Published: 2017

    Aesthetic perception and judgement are not merely cognitive processes, but also involve feelings. Therefore, the empirical study of these experiences requires conceptualization and measurement of aesthetic emotions. Despite the long-standing interest... more

     

    Aesthetic perception and judgement are not merely cognitive processes, but also involve feelings. Therefore, the empirical study of these experiences requires conceptualization and measurement of aesthetic emotions. Despite the long-standing interest in such emotions, we still lack an assessment tool to capture the broad range of emotions that occur in response to the perceived aesthetic appeal of stimuli. Elicitors of aesthetic emotions are not limited to the arts in the strict sense, but extend to design, built environments, and nature. In this article, we describe the development of a questionnaire that is applicable across many of these domains: the Aesthetic Emotions Scale (Aesthemos). Drawing on theoretical accounts of aesthetic emotions and an extensive review of extant measures of aesthetic emotions within specific domains such as music, literature, film, painting, advertisements, design, and architecture, we propose a framework for studying aesthetic emotions. The Aesthemos, which is based on this framework, contains 21 subscales with two items each, that are designed to assess the emotional signature of responses to stimuli’s perceived aesthetic appeal in a highly differentiated manner. These scales cover prototypical aesthetic emotions (e.g., the feeling of beauty, being moved, fascination, and awe), epistemic emotions (e.g., interest and insight), and emotions indicative of amusement (humor and joy). In addition, the Aesthemos subscales capture both the activating (energy and vitality) and the calming (relaxation) effects of aesthetic experiences, as well as negative emotions that may contribute to aesthetic displeasure (e.g., the feeling of ugliness, boredom, and confusion).

     
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    Source: BASE Selection for Comparative Literature
    Language: English
    Media type: Article (journal)
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 150; 800
    Rights:

    Creative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0Creative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0
  7. The emotional power of poetry: neural circuitry, psychophysiology and compositional principles
    Author: Wassiliwizky, Eugen; Koelsch, Stefan; Wagner, Valentin; Jacobsen, Thomas; Menninghaus, Winfried
    Published: 2017

    It is a common experience—and well established experimentally—that music can engage us emotionally in a compelling manner. The mechanisms underlying these experiences are receiving increasing scrutiny. However, the extent to which other domains of... more

     

    It is a common experience—and well established experimentally—that music can engage us emotionally in a compelling manner. The mechanisms underlying these experiences are receiving increasing scrutiny. However, the extent to which other domains of aesthetic experience can similarly elicit strong emotions is unknown. Using psychophysiology, neuroimaging and behavioral responses, we show that recited poetry can act as a powerful stimulus for eliciting peak emotional responses, including chills and objectively measurable goosebumps that engage the primary reward circuitry. Importantly, while these responses to poetry are largely analogous to those found for music, their neural underpinnings show important differences, specifically with regard to the crucial role of the nucleus accumbens. We also go beyond replicating previous music-related studies by showing that peak aesthetic pleasure can co-occur with physiological markers of negative affect. Finally, the distribution of chills across the trajectory of poems provides insight into compositional principles of poetry.

     
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    Source: BASE Selection for Comparative Literature
    Language: English
    Media type: Article (journal)
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 800
    Subjects: Neuroästhetik; Nucleus accumbens; Lyrik; Ästhetik; Musikästhetik
    Rights:

    creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
  8. Being moved: linguistic representation and conceptual structure
    Author: Kühnast, Milena; Wagner, Valentin; Wassiliwizky, Eugen; Jacobsen, Thomas; Menninghaus, Winfried
    Published: 2014

    This study explored the organization of the semantic field and the conceptual structure of moving experiences by investigating German-language expressions referring to the emotional state of being moved. We used present and past participles of eight... more

     

    This study explored the organization of the semantic field and the conceptual structure of moving experiences by investigating German-language expressions referring to the emotional state of being moved. We used present and past participles of eight psychological verbs as primes in a free word-association task, as these grammatical forms place their conceptual focus on the eliciting situation and on the felt emotional state, respectively. By applying a taxonomy of basic knowledge types and computing the Cognitive Salience Index, we identified joy and sadness as key emotional ingredients of being moved, and significant life events and art experiences as main elicitors of this emotional state. Metric multidimensional scaling analyses of the semantic field revealed that the core terms designate a cluster of emotional states characterized by low degrees of arousal and slightly positive valence, the latter due to a nearly balanced representation of positive and negative elements in the conceptual structure of being moved.

     
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    Source: BASE Selection for Comparative Literature
    Language: English
    Media type: Article (journal)
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 800
    Subjects: Ergriffenheit; Expressivität; Wortassoziation; Ästhetik; Gefühl; Gefühlsausdruck
    Rights:

    creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/de/deed.de ; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
  9. Mapping the aesthetic space of literature "from below"
    Author: Knoop, Christine Angela; Wagner, Valentin; Jacobsen, Thomas; Menninghaus, Winfried
    Published: 2016

    The present paper aims to elucidate the conceptual structure of the aesthetics of literature.Following Fechner's "aesthetics from below" (1876) and adopting a method introduced by Jacobsen, Buchta, Kohler, and Schroeger (2004), we asked 1544... more

     

    The present paper aims to elucidate the conceptual structure of the aesthetics of literature.Following Fechner's "aesthetics from below" (1876) and adopting a method introduced by Jacobsen, Buchta, Kohler, and Schroeger (2004), we asked 1544 German-speaking research participants to list adjectives that they use to label aesthetic dimensions of literature in general and of individual literary forms and genres in particular (novels, short stories, poems, plays, comedies). According to our analyses of frequency, mean list rank, and the Cognitive Salience Index, beautiful and suspenseful rank highest across all target categories. For plays/comedies, funny and sad turned out to be the most relevant terms; for novels and short stories, suspenseful, interesting and romantic; and for poetry romantic, along with the music-related terms harmonious, rhythmic, and melodious. A comparison of our results with analogous studies for visual aesthetics and music yielded a comprehensive map of the distribution of aesthetic appeal dimensions across sensory modalities and aesthetic domains, with poetry and music showing the greatest overlap.

     
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    Source: BASE Selection for Comparative Literature
    Language: English
    Media type: Article (journal)
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 800
    Subjects: Ästhetik; Poetik; Literaturgattung
    Rights:

    creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
  10. Tears falling on goosebumps : Co-occurrence of emotional lacrimation and emotional piloerection indicates a psychophysiological climax in emotional arousal
    Author: Wassiliwizky, Eugen; Jacobsen, Thomas; Heinrich, Jan; Schneiderbauer, Manuel; Menninghaus, Winfried
    Published: 2017

    This psychophysiological study is the first to examine the relationship between emotional tears and emotional piloerection (i.e., goosebumps). Although both phenomena have been related to peak states of being moved, details about their temporal... more

     

    This psychophysiological study is the first to examine the relationship between emotional tears and emotional piloerection (i.e., goosebumps). Although both phenomena have been related to peak states of being moved, details about their temporal occurrence and the associated levels of physiological arousal have remained unknown. In our study, we used emotionally powerful film scenes that were self-selected by participants. Our findings show that even within peak moments of emotional arousal, a gradation of intensity is possible. The overlap of tears and goosebumps signifies a maximal climax within peak moments. On the side of the stimulus, we found that displays of prosocial behavior play a crucial role in the elicitation of tears and goosebumps. Finally, based on the results of a formal film analysis of the tears-eliciting clips provided by our participants, as compared to randomly extracted, equally long control clips from the same films, we show how the technical and artistic making of the clips was optimized for the display of social interaction and emotional expressions.

     
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    Source: BASE Selection for Comparative Literature
    Language: English
    Media type: Article (journal)
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 800
    Subjects: Film; Gänsehaut; Ergriffenheit; Gefühl
    Rights:

    creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
  11. READING and FEELING : the effects of a literature-based intervention designed to increase emotional competence in second and third graders
    Author: Kumschick, Irina Rosa; Beck, Luna; Eid, Michael; Witte, Georg; Klann-Delius, Gisela; Heuser, Isabella; Steinlein, Rüdiger; Menninghaus, Winfried
    Published: 2014

    Emotional competence has an important influence on development in school. We hypothesized that reading and discussing children’s books with emotional content increases children’s emotional competence. To examine this assumption, we developed a... more

     

    Emotional competence has an important influence on development in school. We hypothesized that reading and discussing children’s books with emotional content increases children’s emotional competence. To examine this assumption, we developed a literature-based intervention, named READING and FEELING, and tested it on 104 second and third graders in their after-school care center. Children who attended the same care center but did not participate in the emotion-centered literary program formed the control group (n = 104). Our goal was to promote emotional competence and to evaluate the effectiveness of the READING and FEELING program. Emotional competence variables were measured prior to the intervention and 9 weeks later, at the end of the program. Results revealed significant improvements in the emotional vocabulary, explicit emotional knowledge, and recognition of masked feelings. Regarding the treatment effect for detecting masked feelings, we found that boys benefited significantly more than girls. These findings underscore the assumption that children’s literature is an appropriate vehicle to support the development of emotional competence in middle childhood.

     
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    Source: BASE Selection for Comparative Literature
    Language: English
    Media type: Article (journal)
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 800
    Subjects: Gefühl; Intelligenz; Kinderliteratur; Kind; Entwicklung; Affektive Entwicklung
    Rights:

    creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
  12. Reading a suspenseful literary text activates brain areas related to social cognition and predictive inference
    Author: Lehne, Moritz; Engel, Philipp; Rohrmeier, Martin; Menninghaus, Winfried; Jacobs, Arthur M.; Koelsch, Stefan
    Published: 2015

    Stories can elicit powerful emotions. A key emotional response to narrative plots (e.g., novels, movies, etc.) is suspense. Suspense appears to build on basic aspects of human cognition such as processes of expectation, anticipation, and prediction.... more

     

    Stories can elicit powerful emotions. A key emotional response to narrative plots (e.g., novels, movies, etc.) is suspense. Suspense appears to build on basic aspects of human cognition such as processes of expectation, anticipation, and prediction. However, the neural processes underlying emotional experiences of suspense have not been previously investigated. We acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data while participants read a suspenseful literary text (E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman") subdivided into short text passages. Individual ratings of experienced suspense obtained after each text passage were found to be related to activation in the medial frontal cortex, bilateral frontal regions (along the inferior frontal sulcus), lateral premotor cortex, as well as posterior temporal and temporo-parietal areas. The results indicate that the emotional experience of suspense depends on brain areas associated with social cognition and predictive inference.

     
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    Source: BASE Selection for Comparative Literature
    Language: English
    Media type: Article (journal)
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 800
    Subjects: Spannung; Literatur; Hoffmann; E. T. A; Funktionelle Kernspintomografie; Präfrontaler Cortex; Erzähltechnik; Gefühl; Affekt
    Rights:

    creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
  13. Towards a psychological construct of being moved
    Author: Menninghaus, Winfried; Wagner, Valentin; Hanich, Julian; Wassiliwizky, Eugen; Kuehnast, Milena; Jacobsen, Thomas
    Published: 2015

    The emotional state of being moved, though frequently referred to in both classical rhetoric and current language use, is far from established as a well-defined psychological construct. In a series of three studies, we investigated eliciting... more

     

    The emotional state of being moved, though frequently referred to in both classical rhetoric and current language use, is far from established as a well-defined psychological construct. In a series of three studies, we investigated eliciting scenarios, emotional ingredients, appraisal patterns, feeling qualities, and the affective signature of being moved and related emotional states. The great majority of the eliciting scenarios can be assigned to significant relationship and critical life events (especially death, birth, marriage, separation, and reunion). Sadness and joy turned out to be the two preeminent emotions involved in episodes of being moved. Both the sad and the joyful variants of being moved showed a coactivation of positive and negative affect and can thus be ranked among the mixed emotions. Moreover, being moved, while featuring only low-to-mid arousal levels, was experienced as an emotional state of high intensity; this applied to responses to fictional artworks no less than to own-life and other real, but media-represented, events. The most distinctive findings regarding cognitive appraisal dimensions were very low ratings for causation of the event by oneself and for having the power to change its outcome, along with very high ratings for appraisals of compatibility with social norms and self-ideals. Putting together the characteristics identified and discussed throughout the three studies, the paper ends with a sketch of a psychological construct of being moved.

     
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    Source: BASE Selection for Comparative Literature
    Language: English
    Media type: Article (journal)
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 800
    Subjects: Neurobiologie; Einfühlung; Trauer; Freude
    Rights:

    creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
  14. Who Reads Contemporary Erotic Novels and Why?
    Author: Kraxenberger, Maria; Knoop, Christine A.; Menninghaus, Winfried
    Published: 2021

    In the wake of EL James’s series Fifty Shades of Grey, the book market has seen a veritable surge of bestselling erotic novels over the past decade. The online study reported here pursued two questions: (1) Who reads these erotic novels? (2) What are... more

     

    In the wake of EL James’s series Fifty Shades of Grey, the book market has seen a veritable surge of bestselling erotic novels over the past decade. The online study reported here pursued two questions: (1) Who reads these erotic novels? (2) What are the reasons underlying this preference? Most of the readers of erotic novels that responded to our survey are heterosexual women in committed relationships. They are highly educated, from a broad age span, describe themselves as avid readers and like to share their reading experiences with others. Distraction and feelings of ease were identified as prime rewards associated with reading erotic novels. The sexual explicitness of the novels and their potential to provide guidance in life also play a role, yet turned out to be less important than suggested in previous research. Contrary to critical opinion, our participants consider erotic novels––at least to a certain degree–to be emancipated, feminist, and progressive. We relate this finding primarily to the surveyed participants’ rather traditional beliefs regarding gender roles. Our study is the first to explore empirically the readership and the reading rewards underlying a current large-scale cultural phenomenon, emphasizing the need for future investigations off the literary canon.

     
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    Source: BASE Selection for Comparative Literature
    Language: English
    Media type: Article (journal)
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 800; 941; 993
    Subjects: literarystudies; genderstudies; socialscience
    Rights:

    L::CC BY 4.0 ; creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
  15. Aesthetic and emotional effects of meter and rhyme in poetry
    Author: Obermeier, Christian; Menninghaus, Winfried; Koppenfels, Martin von; Raettig, Tim; Schmidt-Kassow, Maren; Otterbein, Sascha; Kotz, Sonja A.
    Published: 2013

    Metrical patterning and rhyme are frequently employed in poetry but also in infant-directed speech, play, rites, and festive events. Drawing on four line-stanzas from nineteenth and twentieth German poetry that feature end rhyme and regular meter,... more

     

    Metrical patterning and rhyme are frequently employed in poetry but also in infant-directed speech, play, rites, and festive events. Drawing on four line-stanzas from nineteenth and twentieth German poetry that feature end rhyme and regular meter, the present study tested the hypothesis that meter and rhyme have an impact on aesthetic liking, emotional involvement, and affective valence attributions. Hypotheses that postulate such effects have been advocated ever since ancient rhetoric and poetics, yet they have barely been empirically tested. More recently, in the field of cognitive poetics, these traditional assumptions have been readopted into a general cognitive framework. In the present experiment, we tested the influence of meter and rhyme as well as their interaction with lexicality in the aesthetic and emotional perception of poetry. Participants listened to stanzas that were systematically modified with regard to meter and rhyme and rated them. Both rhyme and regular meter led to enhanced aesthetic appreciation, higher intensity in processing, and more positively perceived and felt emotions, with the latter finding being mediated by lexicality. Together these findings clearly show that both features significantly contribute to the aesthetic and emotional perception of poetry and thus confirm assumptions about their impact put forward by cognitive poetics. The present results are explained within the theoretical framework of cognitive fluency, which links structural features of poetry with aesthetic and emotional appraisal.

     
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    Source: BASE Selection for Comparative Literature
    Language: English
    Media type: Article (journal)
    Format: Online
    DDC Categories: 150; 800
    Rights:

    creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/de/deed.de ; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess