We find Menninghaus et al.'s hypothesis that activation of genre scripts contributes to (re-)appraising emotions in a positive light a novel and major contribution to understanding negative emotion in the reception of artworks. In this contribution, drawing on our research in the cognition of film genre, we comment on its underlying rationale.
Menninghaus et al. state that genre categorization on the basis of subtle stylistic cues has not been tested to contribute to effects on the processing of negative emotion. However, in a study not referred to in the target article, that is, Visch and Tan (Reference Visch and Tan2009), we did investigate the negativity of emotions across genre categorizations prompted by subtle stylistic cues. We found that all negative emotion labels we measured, namely, sad, impressive (in the sense of threatening), and scary, correlated positively with aesthetic liking, whereas the only positive emotion, funny, did not. This result seems to be in keeping with the hypothesis proposed by Menninghaus et al. Subtle stylistics cue genre scripts, and genre scripts have the potential to issue affective forecasts preparing the ground for a positive appraisal of otherwise negatively valenced emotions.
We present here an additional elaboration of Menninghaus et al.'s reappraisal hypothesis for the case of negative emotion in film viewing, detailing the function of genre scripts, and expand on their explanatory role beyond affective forecasting.
We explained our 2009 results by proposing that specifically film genre scripts contain embodied knowledge of subtle stylistic cues as perceptual simulators. An embodied format seems quite suitable for the representation of rather low-level perceptual features involved in subtle stylistic variations. Embodied simulation responses to subtle stylistic features involved can be directly associated with negative emotions. For example, viewers simulate the impact of fast actor movement associated with fright or an anticipation of pain. Lower-level perception of subtle stylistic features is effective in the vivid simulation of bottom-up driven emotional appraisal, action readiness, and experience. We have more recently presented empirical support for the possibility that genre scripts can have a generative dimension; that is, they can be used in generating genres at least when the usual requirements of film production are alleviated. We showed that subtle stylistic cues can be successfully manipulated by regular film viewers in a genre production task (Visch & Tan Reference Visch, Tan and Saakes2015). Participants were presented with a brief animated film clip running in a loop. They could alter actor movements by adjusting sliders for each of four parameters of movement and were asked to set the parameters so as to create the film genres action, drama, comedy, and nonfiction. The criterion of success was a match between their settings and those obtained from professional animation filmmakers. We explained the results by assuming that regular film viewers used available knowledge of genres in a production task that was quite novel to them. The knowledge concerned consisted of perceptual simulators of actor movement (Barsalou Reference Barsalou2008) acquired in perceptual learning during regular film viewing. We proposed that this knowledge of subtle stylistics is, in normal viewing, used to recognize a film's genre and enjoy it accordingly, but also to synthesize the vivid embodied experience of portrayed action. In our 2009 study, we found indications that the stylistic cues for fiction genres are in fact transformed versions of nonfiction representations, leading to the hypothesis that genres have their specific ways to restructure appraisals associated with negative recipient emotions. Thus, the perceptual simulators act as low-cognitive-level decoupling or “quarantining” (Leslie Reference Leslie1987) devices.
Besides lower-level perceptual knowledge, genre scripts must be assumed to entail higher-order knowledge. Perceptual simulators can be linked to conceptual knowledge; they are part of what Barsalou (Reference Barsalou2003) termed perceptual symbol systems. The perceptual symbol systems entail genre labels that we demonstrated are used in categorization, but also other genre knowledge potentially as complex as regular film viewers must be assumed to avail of, in view of their using genre publicity for the selection and enjoyment of films. On that view genre scripts include conventional plots and characteristic views of the represented world, such as tragic, comic, and melodramatic. We follow Menninghaus et al. in that such script elements enable affective forecasting and, more generally, anticipations and expectancies to be generated right from the beginning of a viewing episode. These, in turn, may prime or guide top-down attention to details of image and sound that matter for generic emotions, including negative ones. The delivery on expectations makes for enjoyment of these.
To this explanation of the enjoyment of negative genre-specific emotions, we add that genre scripts may be sufficiently complex to serve pragmatic functions the sophistication of which would surpass cuing anticipations of upcoming emotions. We, in particular, forward the possibility that they enable an understanding of the filmmaker's planning of the film's narrative discourse as it develops and even offer glimpses of a master plan underlying the narration. (By filmmaker, we refer to a generalized agent perceived in charge of the narration rather than a specific person. See Bordwell's [Reference Bordwell1985] concept of a film viewer constructed “narrative intelligence.”) In such a plan, the invocation of negative emotions can be perceived to have a function serving more encompassing intentions, notably the presentation of an interesting view of the represented story world and its events, characters, and themes. For example, my genre knowledge includes an intuition that my negative emotion in viewing a poignant and sad drama has a function in the filmmaker's plan to make me share a tragic view of some fictional world, with possible ramifications for my views of the real world. We propose then that genre scripts have a pragmatic dimension functional in enjoying and appreciating genre films, including but not limited to their typical unpleasant emotions. To the degree that the scripts are shared among filmmakers and film viewers – see our 2015 experiment above – they enable viewers to synthesize the perceptions and experience the filmmaker has in mind, and more generally distill what they are up to.
Thus, we propose, genre scripts may link aesthetic experiences with the perception and possible sharing of intentions with an author. We find such a communicative factor missing in the Distancing-Embracing model of the enjoyment of negative emotion in art reception. First, on a most general note, we argue that the experience of extraordinarily intense and especially negative emotions can induce needs to attribute these to particular aesthetic motivations, and if these cannot be readily identified, attribution to a maker or author may be sought. This has been found in research of anger- and disgust-inducing works of art (Silvia and Brown Reference Silvia and Brown2007). Second, a communicative factor might integrate the two components of the model, as both Distancing and Embracing can be means for as well as ends of sharing efforts with the filmmaker. Moreover, the feeling of sharing may in itself be rewarding, perhaps that of negative emotions and less pleasant views of the world in the first place (Embracing). Finally, the filmmaker's perceived efforts to “quarantine” negative affect may be reciprocated by a recipient's willingness to transform negative emotional appraisals (Distancing).
We find Menninghaus et al.'s hypothesis that activation of genre scripts contributes to (re-)appraising emotions in a positive light a novel and major contribution to understanding negative emotion in the reception of artworks. In this contribution, drawing on our research in the cognition of film genre, we comment on its underlying rationale.
Menninghaus et al. state that genre categorization on the basis of subtle stylistic cues has not been tested to contribute to effects on the processing of negative emotion. However, in a study not referred to in the target article, that is, Visch and Tan (Reference Visch and Tan2009), we did investigate the negativity of emotions across genre categorizations prompted by subtle stylistic cues. We found that all negative emotion labels we measured, namely, sad, impressive (in the sense of threatening), and scary, correlated positively with aesthetic liking, whereas the only positive emotion, funny, did not. This result seems to be in keeping with the hypothesis proposed by Menninghaus et al. Subtle stylistics cue genre scripts, and genre scripts have the potential to issue affective forecasts preparing the ground for a positive appraisal of otherwise negatively valenced emotions.
We present here an additional elaboration of Menninghaus et al.'s reappraisal hypothesis for the case of negative emotion in film viewing, detailing the function of genre scripts, and expand on their explanatory role beyond affective forecasting.
We explained our 2009 results by proposing that specifically film genre scripts contain embodied knowledge of subtle stylistic cues as perceptual simulators. An embodied format seems quite suitable for the representation of rather low-level perceptual features involved in subtle stylistic variations. Embodied simulation responses to subtle stylistic features involved can be directly associated with negative emotions. For example, viewers simulate the impact of fast actor movement associated with fright or an anticipation of pain. Lower-level perception of subtle stylistic features is effective in the vivid simulation of bottom-up driven emotional appraisal, action readiness, and experience. We have more recently presented empirical support for the possibility that genre scripts can have a generative dimension; that is, they can be used in generating genres at least when the usual requirements of film production are alleviated. We showed that subtle stylistic cues can be successfully manipulated by regular film viewers in a genre production task (Visch & Tan Reference Visch, Tan and Saakes2015). Participants were presented with a brief animated film clip running in a loop. They could alter actor movements by adjusting sliders for each of four parameters of movement and were asked to set the parameters so as to create the film genres action, drama, comedy, and nonfiction. The criterion of success was a match between their settings and those obtained from professional animation filmmakers. We explained the results by assuming that regular film viewers used available knowledge of genres in a production task that was quite novel to them. The knowledge concerned consisted of perceptual simulators of actor movement (Barsalou Reference Barsalou2008) acquired in perceptual learning during regular film viewing. We proposed that this knowledge of subtle stylistics is, in normal viewing, used to recognize a film's genre and enjoy it accordingly, but also to synthesize the vivid embodied experience of portrayed action. In our 2009 study, we found indications that the stylistic cues for fiction genres are in fact transformed versions of nonfiction representations, leading to the hypothesis that genres have their specific ways to restructure appraisals associated with negative recipient emotions. Thus, the perceptual simulators act as low-cognitive-level decoupling or “quarantining” (Leslie Reference Leslie1987) devices.
Besides lower-level perceptual knowledge, genre scripts must be assumed to entail higher-order knowledge. Perceptual simulators can be linked to conceptual knowledge; they are part of what Barsalou (Reference Barsalou2003) termed perceptual symbol systems. The perceptual symbol systems entail genre labels that we demonstrated are used in categorization, but also other genre knowledge potentially as complex as regular film viewers must be assumed to avail of, in view of their using genre publicity for the selection and enjoyment of films. On that view genre scripts include conventional plots and characteristic views of the represented world, such as tragic, comic, and melodramatic. We follow Menninghaus et al. in that such script elements enable affective forecasting and, more generally, anticipations and expectancies to be generated right from the beginning of a viewing episode. These, in turn, may prime or guide top-down attention to details of image and sound that matter for generic emotions, including negative ones. The delivery on expectations makes for enjoyment of these.
To this explanation of the enjoyment of negative genre-specific emotions, we add that genre scripts may be sufficiently complex to serve pragmatic functions the sophistication of which would surpass cuing anticipations of upcoming emotions. We, in particular, forward the possibility that they enable an understanding of the filmmaker's planning of the film's narrative discourse as it develops and even offer glimpses of a master plan underlying the narration. (By filmmaker, we refer to a generalized agent perceived in charge of the narration rather than a specific person. See Bordwell's [Reference Bordwell1985] concept of a film viewer constructed “narrative intelligence.”) In such a plan, the invocation of negative emotions can be perceived to have a function serving more encompassing intentions, notably the presentation of an interesting view of the represented story world and its events, characters, and themes. For example, my genre knowledge includes an intuition that my negative emotion in viewing a poignant and sad drama has a function in the filmmaker's plan to make me share a tragic view of some fictional world, with possible ramifications for my views of the real world. We propose then that genre scripts have a pragmatic dimension functional in enjoying and appreciating genre films, including but not limited to their typical unpleasant emotions. To the degree that the scripts are shared among filmmakers and film viewers – see our 2015 experiment above – they enable viewers to synthesize the perceptions and experience the filmmaker has in mind, and more generally distill what they are up to.
Thus, we propose, genre scripts may link aesthetic experiences with the perception and possible sharing of intentions with an author. We find such a communicative factor missing in the Distancing-Embracing model of the enjoyment of negative emotion in art reception. First, on a most general note, we argue that the experience of extraordinarily intense and especially negative emotions can induce needs to attribute these to particular aesthetic motivations, and if these cannot be readily identified, attribution to a maker or author may be sought. This has been found in research of anger- and disgust-inducing works of art (Silvia and Brown Reference Silvia and Brown2007). Second, a communicative factor might integrate the two components of the model, as both Distancing and Embracing can be means for as well as ends of sharing efforts with the filmmaker. Moreover, the feeling of sharing may in itself be rewarding, perhaps that of negative emotions and less pleasant views of the world in the first place (Embracing). Finally, the filmmaker's perceived efforts to “quarantine” negative affect may be reciprocated by a recipient's willingness to transform negative emotional appraisals (Distancing).