title: Fictional characters' emotional state representation: what is its degree of specificity?
abstract: Story events are a psychological cause of emotional reactions, which in turn, motivate subsequent actions. This study addresses the degree of specificity of readers' inferences about fictional characters' emotions. In Experiment 1 (off-line), participants read short stories and selected the emotional term that was more consistent with the protagonist's emotion. Results indicated that participants tended to favor the specific emotional word. In Experiment 2 (on-line), reading times were longer when a target sentence described the protagonist in an emotional state that differed in family from the adequate emotional state, but belonged to the same class and valence of emotions, but no differences were found between emotions belonging to the same family. Overall, these results indicate that emotional inferences are more specific than valence and class, but not specific enough to differentiate subtleties within a family of emotions.
authors.affiliation: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Spain. cmolinari@fibertel.com.ar
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Molinari
authors.forename: Débora
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Burin
authors.forename: Gastón
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Saux
authors.forename: Juan P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Barreyro
authors.forename: Natalia
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Irrazabal
authors.forename: María S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Bechis
authors.forename: Aníbal
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Duarte
authors.forename: Verónica
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Ramenzoni
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001118:Argentina; D032882:Comprehension; D004644:Emotions / Q000145:classification; D006801:Humans; D008091:Literature; D008960:Models, Psychological; D055815:Young Adult