Description
The last two decades have seen much progress in empirically unraveling the question of why people enjoy negative emotions during the reception of art, music, film, and literature. However, the question of when individuals start enjoying negative emotions has rarely been addressed. I present a first exploration of whether fear and sadness predict aesthetic liking also in children. Research has shown that adults do not enjoy fear and sadness per se, but to the extent that these emotions overlap with blended emotions, such as suspense, fascination, and being moved. I employed data of three studies to test whether previous mediation findings generalize to younger age groups. Study 1 included 71 fourth- and fifth-graders who read a brief story. Study 2 assessed 168 adolescents and 485 adults’ evaluations of a broad range of stimuli, including texts, videos, music, and pictures. Study 3 included 205 elementary school children and 173 accompanying adults who listened to children’s stories that were read or told live in the ArtLab of the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics. Participants in all studies completed a newly developed version of the Aesthetic Emotions Scale for children and adolescents, the AESTHEMOS-CA. Two series of mediator models predicting aesthetic evaluation were estimated. Models using fear and joy as predictors included suspense, fascination, or awe as mediators, models using sadness and joy as predictors included being moved or being touched as mediators. The contribution of fear to a positive evaluation of stories and other stimuli were mediated by blended emotions in all age groups. In contrast, there was no evidence for a positive effect of sadness via being moved/being touched on evaluation in children, while the sadness-being moved-liking mediation replicated in adolescents and adults. These preliminary findings suggest that the developmental trajectories of the enjoyment of fear and sadness might differ.
| Names, affilations and contact information | Ines Schindler. Seminar for Media Education, Europa-Universität Flensburg, Flensburg, Germany Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt/M, Germany |
|---|