Appreciation as Audience Response: Exploring Entertainment Gratifications Beyond Hedonism

This article elaborates upon the notion of media enjoyment in the context of film viewing by proposing a complementary type of gratification that we conceptualize as appreciation. Three studies were conducted to tap into the multidimensionality of viewers' entertainment gratifications with a special focus on the domain of more serious, poignant, and pensive media experiences typically associated with genres such as drama, history, documentary, or art films. These studies provide evidence of and measurement for gratifications related to fun and suspense, but also gratifications related to moving and thought‐provoking entertainment experiences, with all three gratifications leading to perceptions of entertainment having a more long‐lasting or enduring effect. The results are discussed with regard to the theoretical conceptualization of entertainment gratification.     

Entertainment is Emotion: The Functional Architecture of the Entertainment Experience

Current standard accounts of entertainment have regarded emotions as essential for the entertainment experience, but it has not been understood why emotions are so important for it. Recent views of entertainment as an adaptively significant activity propose that the distal cause of entertainment activity is an unconscious need for training useful capabilities, whereas the proximal cause is enjoyment of the activity for its own sake. This theoretical paper argues emotions provide the link between distal and proximal causes of engaging in entertainment. An architecture of the entertainment experience based on Steen and Owens' (2001) Steen, F. F. and Owens, S. A. 2001. Evolution's silent pedagogy: An adaptationist model of pretense and entertainment. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 1: 289–321.  [Google Scholar] account of pretense play is proposed. The entertainment experience is an episode of emotions in response to an ongoing guided imagination. Two key factors are posited to shape the entertainment experience. First, interest is asserted as the “go-mechanism” of the entertainment experience. Second, the emotional reactions to the content of imagination are argued to lend coloring to the experience as well as to help train people's adaptive capacities. This architecture contributes to a solution of two problems for a theory of entertainment: the paradox of negative experiences and the perceived reality of entertainment content. In closing, a plea is made for studying the entertainee's appraisal of the entertainer's agency and qualities.     

Pursuing Pleasure or Virtue: The Differential and Overlapping Well-Being Benefits of Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motives

Hedonia (seeking pleasure and comfort) and eudaimonia (seeking to use and develop the best in oneself) are often seen as opposing pursuits, yet each may contribute to well-being in different ways. We conducted four studies (two correlational, one experience-sampling, and one intervention study) to determine outcomes associated with activities motivated by hedonic and eudaimonic aims. Overall, results indicated that: between persons (at the trait level) and within persons (at the momentary state level), hedonic pursuits related more to positive affect and carefreeness, while eudaimonic pursuits related more to meaning; between persons, eudaimonia related more to elevating experience (awe, inspiration, and sense of connection with a greater whole); within persons, hedonia related more negatively to negative affect; between and within persons, both pursuits related equally to vitality; and both pursuits showed some links with life satisfaction, though hedonia’s links were more frequent. People whose lives were high in both eudaimonia and hedonia had: higher degrees of most well-being variables than people whose lives were low in both pursuits (but did not differ in negative affect or carefreeness); higher positive affect and carefreeness than predominantly eudaimonic individuals; and higher meaning, elevating experience, and vitality than predominantly hedonic individuals. In the intervention study, hedonia produced more well-being benefits at short-term follow-up, while eudaimonia produced more at 3-month follow-up. The findings show that hedonia and eudaimonia occupy both overlapping and distinct niches within a complete picture of well-being, and their combination may be associated with the greatest well-being.     

Freud's philosophical inheritance: Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in Beyond the Pleasure Principle

This essay explores the possible significance of Freud's references to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. It attempts to reveal two sides of Freud's philosophical inheritance and explores the structure of Freud's ambivalence toward his intellectual predecessors.     

To be a Fan is to be Happier: Using the Eudaimonic Spectator Questionnaire to Measure Eudaimonic Motivations in Spanish Fans

Many studies have linked audiovisual entertainment to hedonia. Recently, also to eudaimonic happiness. The Eudaimonic Spectator Questionnaire is proposed as a new tool to explore eudaimonic motivations that are linked to the consumption of audiovisual entertainment. The new questionnaire groups these eudaimonic motivations into two factors: the cultivation of cognitive–intellectual growth and social–emotional growth. Once the consistency and reliability of the questionnaire was tested, we observed statistically significant differences between fans and non-fan spectators; these differences were observed in both factors. The results indicated that being a fan is associated with the cultivation of human virtues and character strengths.     

Factor Structure and Construct Validity of the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scales

Feelings of pleasure felt in the moment of goal attainment (consummatory pleasure) are thought to be dissociable from feelings of desire connected with the motivated approach of goals (anticipatory pleasure). The Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scales (TEPS; Gard, Gard, Kring, & John, 2006) was developed to assess individual differences in these distinct processes. Recently, an independent evaluation of the psychometric characteristics of a Chinese-translated TEPS suggested a more complex factor structure (Chan et al., 2012). This study aimed to reexamine the factor structure and convergent and divergent validity of the TEPS in two previously unexamined multiethnic samples. University students in the United Kingdom (N = 294) completed the TEPS and university students in Australia (N = 295) completed the TEPS as well as a battery of conceptually related questionnaires. A confirmatory factor analysis of Gard et al.'s (2006) 2-factor model produced inadequate fit, which model-modification indexes suggested might be due to item cross-loadings. This issue was examined further using an exploratory factor analysis, which revealed a clear 2-factor solution despite cross-loadings among some items. Finally, mixed evidence for convergent–divergent validity was obtained, in terms of relationships between the TEPS and measures of anhedonia, approach-motivation, and positive emotion.     

Eudaimonic Orientation Enhances the Well-Being Experienced by Fathers

Applied Research in Quality of Life - The aim of this study was to investigate the potential moderating roles of eudaimonic orientation (prioritizing authenticity, meaning, excellence, growth) and...     

Peak Sexual and Spiritual Experience: Exploring the Mystical Relationship

Abstract

The nine-category phenomenological typology of mystical peak experiences proposed by Pahnke (1980) was used to construct a framework for understanding and relating peak potentials for sexuality and spirituality. Examples from mystics—St Catherine of Siena, St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila—demonstrate the erotic connectedness they experienced in spiritual peaks. It is proposed that integrating understanding of sexual and spiritual peak experience provides more knowledge of what it means to be ‘fully human’ and creates insight into the depths of intimacy with self, others, and the ultimate.     

自我实现的幸福——心理幸福感研究述评

心理幸福感是基于实现论的幸福感研究范式,研究者认为幸福并不只是情感上的体验,而更应该关注个人潜能的实现,从理论出发建构幸福感的结构,指导幸福感测量的发展。已有的研究表明,人口学变量、人格变量和生活事件等内外因素可以较为有效地预测心理幸福感水平。近年来,心理幸福感与主观幸福感之间呈现出整合的趋势。此外,中国人的幸福感研究在借鉴西方成果的同时,仍然需要立足于本土文化,做进一步的理论探讨和实证检验     

Malicious Pleasure Evaluated: Is Pleasure an Unconditional Good?

Abstract: I examine and criticize the thinking that leads people to deny malicious pleasure's goodness.     

Beyond Pathologizing Harm: Understanding PTSD in the Context of War Experience

An alternative to objectifying approaches to understanding Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) grounded in hermeneutic phenomenology is presented. Nurses who provided care for soldiers injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and sixty-seven wounded male servicemen in the rehabilitation phase of their recovery were interviewed. PTSD is the one major psychiatric diagnosis where social causation is established, yet PTSD is predominantly viewed in terms of the usual neuro-physiological causal models with traumatic social events viewed as pathogens with dose related effects. Biologic models of causation are applied reductively to both predisposing personal vulnerabilities and strengths that prevent PTSD, such as resiliency. However, framing PTSD as an objective disease state separates it from narrative historical details of the trauma. Personal stories and cultural meanings of the traumatic events are seen as epiphenomenal, unrelated to the understanding of, and ultimately, the therapeutic treatment of PTSD. Most wounded service members described classic symptoms of PTSD: flashbacks, insomnia, anxiety etc. All experienced disturbance in their sense of time and place. Rather than see the occurrence of these symptoms as decontextualized mechanistic reverberations of war, we consider how these symptoms meaningfully reflect actual war experiences and sense of displacement experienced by service members.     

Pleasure and Aversion: Challenging the Conventional Dichotomy

Philosophy and its descendents in the behavioral sciences have traditionally divided incentives into those that are sought and those that are avoided. Positive incentives are held to be both attractive and memorable because of the direct effects of pleasure. Negative incentives are held to be unattractive but still memorable (the problem of pain) because they force unpleasant emotions on an individual by an unmotivated process, either a hardwired response (unconditioned response) or one substituted by association (conditioned response). Negative incentives are divided into those that are always avoided and those that are avoided only by higher mental processes—archetypically the passions, which are also thought of as hardwired or conditioned. Newer dichotomies within the negative have been proposed, hinging on whether a negative incentive is nevertheless sought (“wanted but not liked”) or on an incentive's being negative only because it is confining (the product of “rule worship”). The newer dichotomies have lacked motivational explanations, and there is reason to question conditioning in the motivational mechanism for the older ones.

Both experimental findings and the examination of common experience indicate that even the most aversive experiences, such as pain and panic, do not prevail in reflex fashion, but because of an urge to attend to them. The well-established hyperbolic curve in which prospective rewards are discounted implies a mechanism for such an urge, as well as for the “lower” incentives in the other dichotomies. The properties of these lower incentives are predicted by particular durations of temporary preferences on a continuum that stretches from fractions of a second to years.     

Pleasure and Complexity: Berlyne Revisited

D. E. Berlyne (1960, 1974) posited an increasing linear function for complexity with an inverted U-shaped function for pleasure. Berlyne's theory of aesthetic response was tested through the presentation of 6 color reproductions of paintings to 92 participants and the gauging of their responses. When participants' pleasure was compared with interest, that hypothesis was upheld. However, when complexity was compared with pleasure, Berlyne's theory was not supported.