Media and emotion
Lightly covered terrain
What is emotion?
• Widely disputed, so we need to simply choose
a position
– emotion is a complex of beliefs, arousal and
valence of affect
Features of emotion
• Emotions are typically conscious phenomena
• They typically involve pervasive bodily
manifestations
• They vary in intensity, type and range of intentional
objects, valence
• They can undermine rationality
• They contribute to defining our ends and priorities;
• They have a central place in moral education and the
moral life.
– Wikipedia
– You don’t always have control over your emotions
– Emotions drive action
– Emotions organize cognitive and behavioral
processes
• Motivational
What determines which emotion we
are feeling?
• Miron: The dedicated neural pathway that is
being stimulated.
– Different pathways are excited depending upon the
emotion.
However: In some cases the paths are quite
similar and therefore the individual must
identify the emotion based on an evaluation
of the cause and situation (anger v. fear)
The experience of emotion
• Psychophysiological effects are often “autonomic” in
that they do not require thinking
– May override more logical, evaluative brain functions
when the emotional intensity is high
– Feelings are learned along with situations, people, etc.
– Similar people or situations may bring about the same
feelings and the same feelings may bring about memories
of the situations or people they were encoded with
Physical responses to emotion
• The body frequently responds to Shame by warmth in
the upper chest and face, Fear by a heightened
heartbeat, increased "flinch" response, and increased
muscle tension. The sensations connected with anger
are nearly indistinguishable from fear. Happiness is
often felt as an expansive or swelling feeling in the
chest and the sensation of lightness or boyancy, as if
standing underwater. Sadness by a feeling of
tightness in the throat and eyes, and relaxation in the
arms and legs. Desire can be accompanied by a dry
throat and heavy breathing.
Innate emotions
• Basic emotions are hard-wired into our
brains.
• “Fight or flight” reactions
– Fear
– Anger
• “Lizard brain” emotions
Evidence for the innateness of
(some) emotions
1) Similar forms demonstrated among
species;
2) Similar form from childhood to
adulthood; expressed before learning can
take place;
3) Similar across cultures;
4) Similar in blind and sighted people.
– http://emotion.bme.duke.edu/Emotion/EmoRes/Psych/CogExp/Beh
av.html
Social emotions
• Emotions that allow you to interact with others
effectively and to maintain social bonds
– Love
– Friendship
– Empathy
• Learned early through the positive
relationships between mom and food, etc.
• Located in old mammalian brain
Relations to others
• Much of emotion is based on our relationships
with others
– Interactions with others
– Observation of others
– Thoughts about others
• A range of relations between audience
members and media personas has been
proposed, with varying emotional implications
Major emotions
• Sadness/sorrow
– Sources:
• Loss of significant other/love/affiliation
• Empathy for those in pain/poor circumstance
• Anger
– Frustration
– Control by outside force
• Fear
– Threat
• Darkness, snakes and spiders
• Socially-learned fears
Robert Plutchik’s model
of primary and derived
emtions
Why haven’t emotions been replaced with
higher order thinking?
• Miron: Survival value maintained anger,
sorrow, love, fear, etc. until the development
of civilization. There are still advantages for
several of the emotions in that they provide
coherence of thought, feeling and action in
regards to general situations—anger for
frustration, love for sexuality and nurturance,
fear for self-preservation in the face of a threat.
What are emotions for?
• Emotions are essential to decisionmaking
• Emotions can still be helpful in driving
behavior effectively and efficiently
Influence of culture
• Culture provides a wide range of
objects and rewards that can tie
emotion to behaviors, beliefs,
experiences, etc.
• Cultures differ in their evaluation of
varied beliefs and behaviors, and
individual emotions are influenced
by those differences
Emotion and entertainment
• Entertainment usually is tied to being ‘moved’
by a media experience
– Arousal
• Though it is clear that entertainment and
emotion are closely tied, the nature of the
relationship is not well understood
Why are we drawn to emotional
content?
• Miron: Arousal (a component of emotions) is
inherently pleasurable
– The main driving force for human action is to seek
pleasure and avoid pain
– Arousal stimulates the release of dopamine, a sort
of natural ‘drug’ within the brain
Why are we drawn to emotional
content?
• Emotions are encoded along with cognitions,
perceptions, behaviors and outcomes. When
we encounter similar cognitions, etc., the
linked emotions are called up—especially
when a lack of some important condition is
identified (food, warmth, sex)
Why are we drawn to emotional
content?
• Zillmann: We enjoy watching the good guys
rewarded and the bad guys punished. The
enjoyment is enhanced by the wrong thing
happening prior to an appropriate conclusion
Physical elements that affect arousal
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Movement/camera movement
Volume/speed of sound
Cut speed
Camera angle/distance
Content elements that affect
emotion
• Threats
– Spiders
– Snakes
– Spoiled food
• Music
– Major/minor
– Learned associations
• Characters
– Identification/liking
– Emotion presentation
• Plot
– Justice
• Objects of emotional
attachment
– Flags, Statue of Liberty
Explaining the effects of imagination
• Philosophers forward two basic accounts to
explain the effects that the imagination has
upon us.
• Simulation theory employs a computer
analogy, saying that imagining something
involves one having one's usual emotional
response to situations and people, only the
emotions are running off-line.
– Our emotions are aroused, but we do not feel a
need to take action
• This could explain why we enjoy watching things on
the screen that we would hate seeing in real life.
– Horror shows
– Tear jerkers
• Simulation theorists say that when we experience an
emotion off-line that would be distressing in real life,
we may actually enjoy having that emotion in the
safety of the off-line situation.
Problems
• Why would experiencing distressing emotions
offline end up being pleasurable?
– They do not provide a convincing explanation
• [Can we draw upon some of the cognitive work,
sociobiology for this?]
• What does it mean for emotions to be running
“off-line?”
Thought theory
• An alternative account of our emotional
response to imagined scenarios has been
dubbed the thought theory. This view says that
we can have emotional responses to mere
thoughts.
– Anger can be brought about by hearing of an
injustice
• Thus, our emotions are brought about by the thoughts
that occur to us as we are watching a film. When we
see the dastardly villain tying the innocent heroine to
the tracks, we are both concerned and outraged by the
very thought that he is acting in this way and that she
is therefore in danger.
– We are aware that we are witnessing merely fictional
situations, so there is no temptation to take physical action.
– As a result, there is no need, says the thought theorist, for
the complexities of simulation theory in order to explain
why we are moved by the movies.
But . . .
• Why should a mere thought draw an emotional
response from us?
– We are quite capable of being aware of horrific
things happening to people yet be unmoved by that
knowledge.
– Since we can't have full-fledged beliefs about the
fictional characters in films, the thought theory
needs to explain why we are so moved by their
fates.
Emotional engagement
• “Philosophic discussion of viewer
involvement with films starts out with a
puzzle that has been raised about many art
forms: Why should we care what happens to
fictional characters? After all, since they are
fictional, their fates shouldn't matter to us in
the way that the fates of real people do. But,
of course, we do get involved in the destinies
of these imaginary being. The question is
why.”
– Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Emotional engagement
• “One answer, common in the film theory tradition, is
that the reason that we care about what happens to
some fictional characters is because we identify with
them. Although or, perhaps, because these characters
are highly idealized — they are more beautiful, brave,
resourceful, etc. than any actual human being could
be — viewers identify with them, thereby also taking
themselves to be correlates of these ideal beings. But
once we see the characters as versions of ourselves,
their fates matter to us, for we see ourselves as
wrapped up in their stories.”
– Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy
However:
• We exhibit a wide variety of attitudes toward
the fictional characters we see projected on the
screen.
• We have emotional reactions to characters
with whom we did not identify.
• “The general outline of the answer
philosophers of film have provided to the
question of our emotional involvement with
films is that we care about what happens in
films because films get us to imagine things
taking place, things that we do care about.
Because how we imagine things working out
does affect our emotions, fiction films have an
emotional impact upon us.”
– Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Media influences over emotion
• Sound/music
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Major/minor key
Melody/dissonance
Volume
Dynamics
Speed
Timbre
Sharpness
Orchestration/richness
Music and emotion
• Leonard Bernstein borrowed from Chomsky’s
ideas and applied them to music, claiming that
there is an innate code buried in the musical
structure which we are biologically endowed
to understand.
• He tried to show how the underlying strings,
the basic meanings behind music, are
transformed by composers into the surface
structure of a composition.
• Bernstein thought that the main
difference between language and music is
that music amplifies the emotions more
effectively, thereby making it more
universal.
Expression rules research
• Many have assumed that the greatest part of the
emotional power of music comes in the variations of
tempo, dynamics, and articulation. Several
researchers have also assumed that these variations
conform to structural principles and have attempted to
demonstrate these expression rules.
• Paul Hindemith wrote that tempi that match
the heart rate at rest (roughly 60-70 beats per
minute) suggest a state of repose. Tempi that
exceed this heart rate create a feeling of
excitation. He wrote that mood shifts in music
are faster and more contrasting than they are in
real life.
Happy and sad classical music
• Children and adults were asked to rate
classical music that was manipulated in
tempo and minor v. major key as sad or
happy
Video influences over emotion
• Pacing
• Camerawork
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Movement
Distance
Focus
Color
Babies one year old react to emotions
on TV
• Experiment with toys and televised examples
of positive and negative emotions being
demonstrated in facial expressions
– 1-year olds react to negative but not positive
expressions
– No difference for 10-month olds