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Explaining the enjoyment of negative emotions evoked by the arts: The need to consider empathy and other underlying mechanisms of emotion induction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2017

Jonna K. Vuoskoski  and
Tuomas Eerola
Jonna K. Vuoskoski
Affiliation:
Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 1DB, United Kingdom. [email protected]://users.ox.ac.uk/~musf0093/ Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä 40014, Finland.
Tuomas Eerola
Affiliation:
Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä 40014, Finland. Department of Music, Durham University, Durham DH1 3RL, United Kingdom. [email protected]://community.dur.ac.uk/tuomas.eerola/
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Abstract

Any model aiming to explain the enjoyment of negative emotions in the context of the arts should consider how works of art are able to induce emotional responses in the first place. For instance, research on empathy and the arts suggests that the psychological processes that mediate the enjoyment of sadness and horror may be fundamentally different.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 40 , 2017 , e378
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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