title: The Distancing-Embracing model of the enjoyment of negative emotions in art reception.
abstract: Why are negative emotions so central in art reception far beyond tragedy? Revisiting classical aesthetics in the light of recent psychological research, we present a novel model to explain this much discussed (apparent) paradox. We argue that negative emotions are an important resource for the arts in general, rather than a special license for exceptional art forms only. The underlying rationale is that negative emotions have been shown to be particularly powerful in securing attention, intense emotional involvement, and high memorability, and hence is precisely what artworks strive for. Two groups of processing mechanisms are identified that conjointly adopt the particular powers of negative emotions for art's purposes. The first group consists of psychological distancing mechanisms that are activated along with the cognitive schemata of art, representation, and fiction. These schemata imply personal safety and control over continuing or discontinuing exposure to artworks, thereby preventing negative emotions from becoming outright incompatible with expectations of enjoyment. This distancing sets the stage for a second group of processing components that allow art recipients to positively embrace the experiencing of negative emotions, thereby rendering art reception more intense, more interesting, more emotionally moving, more profound, and occasionally even more beautiful. These components include compositional interplays of positive and negative emotions, the effects of aesthetic virtues of using the media of (re)presentation (musical sound, words/language, color, shapes) on emotion perception, and meaning-making efforts. Moreover, our Distancing-Embracing model proposes that concomitant mixed emotions often help integrate negative emotions into altogether pleasurable trajectories.
authors.affiliation: Department of Language and Literature,Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics,60322 Frankfurt am Main,Germany.w.m@aesthetics.mpg.de.
authors.forename: Winfried
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Menninghaus
authors.affiliation: Department of Language and Literature,Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics,60322 Frankfurt am Main,Germany.valentin.wagner@aesthetics.mpg.de.
authors.forename: Valentin
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Wagner
authors.affiliation: Department of Arts,Culture and Media,University of Groningen,9700 AB Groningen,The Netherlands.j.hanich@rug.nl.
authors.forename: Julian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hanich
authors.affiliation: Department of Language and Literature,Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics,60322 Frankfurt am Main,Germany.eugen.wassiliwizky@aesthetics.mpg.de.
authors.forename: Eugen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Wassiliwizky
authors.affiliation: Experimental Psychology Unit,Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg,22043 Hamburg,Germany.jacobsen@hsu-hh.de.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jacobsen
authors.affiliation: University of Bergen,5020 Bergen,Norway.stefan.koelsch@uib.no.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Koelsch
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D001154:Art; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D004954:Esthetics; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010465:Perception
keywords: aesthetic enjoyment; aesthetic virtues; art schema; genre effects; interplays of positive and negative emotions; meaning making; mixed emotions