Fictional characters’ emotional state representation: What is its degree of specificity? / La representación de estados emocionales de personajes de ficción: ¿cuál es su grado de especificidad?

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 (AU)

Los acontecimientos de una narración son causa psicológica de reacciones emocionales, que a su vez motivan acciones subsiguientes. El presente estudio se centra en el grado de especificidad de las inferencias de los lectores acerca de las emociones de personajes de ficción. En el Experimento 1 (off-line) los participantes leían relatos breves y seleccionaban el término emocional más adecuado para designar la emoción del protagonista. Los resultados mostraron que los participantes tendían a elegir la palabra que designaba la emoción específica. En el Experimento 2 (on-line) no hubo diferencia en los tiempos de lectura de oraciones que mencionaban estados emocionales pertenecientes a una misma familia de emociones; los tiempos de lectura fueron, en cambio, significativamente mayores para oraciones que mencionaban un estado emocional de la misma valencia que el adecuado, diferente por pertenecer a una distinta familia de emociones dentro de la misma clase general. Estos resultados muestran que las inferencias emocionales son más específicas que una mera valencia y clase de emociones, pero o tan específicas como para diferenciar sutilezas dentro de una misma familia de emociones (AU)

Fictional characters' emotional state representation: what is its degree of specificity?

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.