R2.1. Negative emotions are a predestined resource for the arts (= Hypothesis 1)

In our introductory section, we juxtapose two findings from two distant traditions. The first finding (A) comes from recent psychological research: In comparison to positive emotions, negative emotions have empirically been shown to prioritize attention, to have a distinct potential for a high intensity of subjective feeling, and to enjoy privileged storage in memory. The second finding (B) dates back to ancient rhetoric and poetics: The relevant treatises converge in suggesting that the powers to prioritize attention, to support strong emotional involvement, and to secure access to memory are precisely what the arts in general strive for. We conjecture (= Hypothesis 1): if A and B, then it might be concluded that (C) negative emotions are actually predestined resources for the arts rather than exceptional liabilities.

Reconsidering the literature, one could challenge the notion that (A) and/or (B) are correct summaries of findings/theories in the two research fields; in this case, (C) would not follow. One could likewise try to put forward arguments as to why (C) would not necessarily follow, even if (A) and (B) are right. Our conjecture was not challenged on either of these grounds. It was, however, challenged for reasons that misrepresent our argument. Nadal et al. (para. 3) write: “This assumption is clearly untenable, because not all interactions with art involve negative emotions” (Martindale 2001; Smith 2014). We note that we only propose that negative emotions may be predestined resources for the arts' efforts and not that they are mandatory resources. Moreover, we explicitly stress: “we do by no means rule out that visual representations of beautiful humans, animals, landscapes, stills, and so forth can well be enjoyed as beautiful without necessarily co-evoking any negative emotional associations” (sect. 1, final paragraph).

Regarding another conceptual issue, we fully subscribe to the remark by Vuoskoski & Eerola that our model should not be described as a “transformation” model. After all, the activation of an art framing typically precedes the actual processing of artworks. Accordingly, we do not imply – as suggested by Leder & Schwarz – that an undistanced negative emotion is first experienced and only post hoc relieved from some important aversive implications associated with negative emotions in an ordinary reality framing. Our model likewise does not predict that the Embracing components “transform” the negative emotions into positive ones, but rather that they enhance their compatibility – as negative emotions – with enjoyment. For these reasons, at some stage of writing the article, we systematically erased the term transformation. It has, however, survived this revision in three sentences. We are grateful for the opportunity to clarify this inconsistency.

R2.2. Elicitors of negative emotions play a great role in artworks, and the corresponding emotions are indeed experienced (= Hypothesis 2)

As reported in our article, several 20th-century philosophers have advocated the notion that art recipients may actually not experience any relevant levels of genuine negative emotions, but only erroneously misattribute negative emotions to their felt responses. To rule out this possibility, we reviewed available empirical findings regarding both self-reported subjectively felt emotions and objective measures of physiological indicators of such emotions. This review provided substantial evidence for Hypothesis 2 as stated above.

The commentary by Konečni is the only one that challenges this hypothesis. On the one hand, Konečni elaborates on differences between art-elicited emotions and emotions in more ordinary life-contexts. These differences are by no means disregarded by our model but are in fact the very core of what we call the Distancing effects resulting from the activation of the situation schema of art reception. On the other hand, referring in a very general way to well-known difficulties of interpreting changes in physiological and electromyographic (EMG) data as indicative of genuine emotional episodes, Konečni dismisses all reported physiological evidence in a wholesale fashion, without discussing the respective studies in any detail. Therefore, his remarks are far from providing a scientifically sound refutation of all evidence in favor of the experiencing of negative emotions in art reception. (For new evidence regarding the actual experiencing of negative emotions in art reception, see also our comments regarding section 4.2 [= Hypothesis 5].)

R2.3. The Distancing factor of our model

Top-down cognitive influences on processing negative emotions constitute the Distancing factor of our model. Our review of the pertinent literature can be summarized as follows: Negative emotions experienced in art contexts differ from ordinary emotions by virtue of being cognitively framed as art-, representation- and/or fiction-elicited emotions. Because these framings imply personal safety and control over continuing or discontinuing the exposure, they keep some of the aversive implications that negative emotions would typically have in real life contexts at a psychological distance. As a result, the art framing has the potential to allow for higher beauty, liking, and other positive ratings compared to a reality framing, even without reducing the levels of the felt negative emotions involved (= Hypothesis 3). This latter qualification is crucial, because if the art framing would reduce the intensity of felt negative emotions, the Distancing component of our model would be incompatible both with our Hypothesis 1, according to which negative emotions are valuable resources for the arts (rather than mere antidotes to be tamed or converted), and with our Hypothesis 2, stipulating that negative emotions are actually experienced to significant degrees during art reception.

A remark by Nadal et al. suggests a mismatch between our model and the evidence we rely on: “The DEM [Distancing-Embracing model] predicts that these schemata [i.e., the art, representation, and fiction schemata] should influence the experience of negative emotions. However, Wagner et al. (Reference Wagner, Menninghaus, Hanich and Jacobsen2014) and Gerger et al. (Reference Gerger, Leder and Kremer2014) – cited as supporting studies – found no such influence.” We disagree. The two studies do show what our model predicts, namely, that art framings, compared with reality framings, render different sets of pictures with affectively negative content more aesthetically enjoyable, without reducing, let alone erasing, the levels of felt negative emotions. In other words, they reveal that because of an art framing, substantial levels of negative emotions are compatible with, if not conducive to, higher aesthetic liking.

To be sure, both philosophers and appraisal theorists have predicted precisely what Nadal et al. apparently mistook for our position: that in the absence of challenges to own personal goals, art-elicited emotions, and most notably negative ones, should have a lower intensity in terms of subjective feeling, motor expression, and peripheral physiological measures when compared with emotional responses to analogous stimuli in real-life contexts (cf. Frijda Reference Frijda1988, p. 352; Lange Reference Lange1901, pp. 100–05; Lazarus Reference Lazarus1991; Martindale Reference Martindale1984; Scherer Reference Scherer2005). We do not question this view for real-life contexts. However, several researchers, including emotion psychologists, have proposed a divergent perspective for art contexts. They hypothesized, and could partly show, that the suspension of prototypical action responses that results from the absence of challenges to own safety and other important goals makes room for a higher second-order awareness of one's felt sensations (Lambie & Marcel Reference Lambie and Marcel2002) and may actually support an increased intensity of felt emotions (Gross & Levenson Reference Gross and Levenson1997; Maslow et al. Reference Maslow, Frager, Fadiman, McReynolds and Cox1970; Oatley Reference Oatley1994; Tan Reference Tan and Lewis2000, p. 117; Visch et al. Reference Visch, Tan and Molenaar2010). The appraisal theorist Nico Frijda pushed this reasoning even to the point of claiming that art recipients intensely and hedonically “indulge” in these pragmatically useless emotions for their own sake (Frijda & Sundararajan Reference Frijda and Sundararajan2007).

Notably, the theoretical assumptions referred to above did not specifically consider the role of negative emotions. This is where our model makes a difference. In general, it is typologically similar to the above-referred-to perspectives that give the absence of challenges to own goals, safety and action responses a decisively different turn for art-elicited, compared with garden variety, emotions. At the same time, following Batteux's remark that an art context is more beneficial to negative than to positive emotions, our model predicts differential benefits of the art framing for negative compared with positive emotions (for all details, see sect. 3 of our article). And it moreover spells out five art-specific mechanisms that support a Distancing-enabled Embracing specifically of negative emotions. As suggested in the commentaries by Armstrong & Cutting and Vuoskoski & Eerola, immersion and transportation are likely to be further processes in art reception that counteract the tendency for reduced intensity of felt negative emotions predicted by a classical appraisal perspective.

The hypothesis of an enjoyable high intensity of felt negative emotions is clearly supported by the empirical evidence provided in our article and, even more strikingly, by the additional recent evidence we report in our response concerning commentaries on section 4.2. Hogan's commentary even suggests that nonaversive exposure to simulations of aversive events may be adaptive for coping with similar challenges in real-life contexts.

Most commentaries do not challenge our hypothesis of Distancing, but focus on refining the predictions of our model and including more provisions for cases in which it may not work as predicted. Gerger, Ishizu, & Pelowski (Gerger et al.) suggest that the effects of the distancing mechanisms may not be a binary issue of being on versus off, but may vary over the temporal course of aesthetic trajectories. Moreover, there may be numerous gradations, depending on how unambiguous or ambiguous the framing is perceived to be (Weisberg & Friend), how representational or nonrepresentational the artwork is, and the extent to which it involves further dimensions of indeterminacy (Rabb). Live stage performances of individuals in pain and distress may have so immediate and visceral an impact on viewers that they reduce the art framing effect (Goldstein). Moreover, the adoption of an “aesthetic stance” or “focus” may yield effects similar to those of an art framing (Brattico & Vuust). We consider all of these remarks as potentially adding modifying variables, and hence higher granularity of predictive power, to our Distancing factor.

Finally, Davies deplores that our discussion of Distancing does not cover several contributions from analytic philosophy in the 1960s. We note first that our article has an expressed bias toward reviewing theoretical hypotheses in the light of empirical evidence. Second, because we consider the Embracing factor to be the more original part of our model, we deliberately spent only roughly one-seventh of our main text on the Distancing factor. Within these constraints, we could not cover the rich philosophical discussion in a more inclusive way.

R2.4. The Embracing factor

The longest section of our article – and the one on which we place the strongest focus – is devoted to the Embracing factor. Compared with the other sections and their corresponding hypotheses, this section has far fewer antecedents in the existing literature. The five subsections propose five mechanisms that allow art recipients not only to tolerate, but even to “embrace” negative emotions.

R3. Commentaries addressing issues that are included in our model, but not treated in the article

From the outset, our article acknowledges that several important variables of art reception are not treated in the article, even though they are included in our model's schema. Specifically, we identified “individual differences (personality traits, aesthetic preferences, familiarity, expertise, current mood states)” and “social, cultural, and situational variables of art reception” (see Fig. 1 of target article) as variables that also need to be considered in all specific cases of enjoying negative emotions in art reception. We likewise noted that we deliberately did not treat potential functional benefits – other than the immediate processing pleasure – that might result from enjoyable exposure to art-elicited negative emotions.

Many of the commentaries fill this gap, offering insights and suggestions regarding how these variables might play a role specifically in responses to artworks involving substantial levels of negative emotions. Thus, Hershfield & Alter offer a rich and empirically well-supported perspective on the importance of situational factors at both the personal and the macroeconomic, social, and political levels, including some interesting hints regarding empirical evidence for functional benefits resulting from frequent exposure to mixed emotions (Adler & Hershfield Reference Adler and Hershfield2012; Larsen et al. Reference Larsen, Hemenover, Norris, Cacioppo, Aspinwall and Staudinger2003). Similarly, Leder & Schwarz convincingly argue that well-established general factors of aesthetic liking – in particular, familiarity, expertise, and the resulting differences in fluency – are also likely to have an emotion-regulatory effect on the compatibility of negative emotions with aesthetic enjoyment (see also Brattico & Vuust). Green & Fitzgerald provide evidence that the distancing implication of a fiction framing may actually increase prosocial behavior compared with a reality framing. Other commentaries bear on person-related variables for the phenomenon under consideration (Fayn & Kuppens; Vuoskoski & Eerola) and on the power that authorial intentions and strategies may exert over recipients even on a subconscious level (Armstrong & Cutting). Azevedo & Tsakiris make a case for considering “embodied simulation” as an important factor in the context of our model. Leddington suggests that our model may be helpful for understanding phenomena beyond the confines of the arts proper, specifically, theatrical magic.

Several commentaries stress the importance of social sharing and prosocial relatedness for responses to artworks involving negative emotions (Bastian; Egloff; Tan & Visch). Prosocial values and feelings of social relatedness constitute an integral part of our conceptualization of “being moved” as an attachment or bonding emotion that loads particularly high on appraisals for prosocial norms and self-ideals (Menninghaus et al. Reference Menninghaus, Wagner, Hanich, Wassiliwizky, Kuehnast and Jacobsen2015b). However, we have not specifically investigated social sharing in this context. Bastian reports evidence that sharing negative emotions can not only lead to an increase in affiliative behavior, but also “amplifies both the pleasantness and the unpleasantness of the respective experience.” Egloff even makes the strong claim that social sharing is a “necessary” variable in any aesthetic enjoyment associated with negative emotions. Although this strong claim is not supported by the evidence we are aware of, the issue is clearly of great importance and calls for empirical studies that specifically target a distinct contribution of social sharing to the enjoyment of negative and mixed emotions, both in art reception and beyond.

Kreuzbauer suggests that interaction between the artist and the audience is a further sociopragmatic variable that may influence the enjoyment associated with negative emotions. Swain & Ho offer reasons why our model may even apply to adaptive parental responses to (otherwise annoying) baby cries, responses that in turn are beneficial for the baby's future life trajectory.

We welcome these additions to our core model, but refrain from any detailed comment, because no direct incompatibility with our model is involved and because we lack expertise regarding some of the fields referred to in the commentaries.

R4.1. Can the enjoyment of negative emotions be comprehensively explained by the mechanisms of prediction error reduction?

Following up on an earlier article (Van de Cruys & Wagemans Reference Van de Cruys and Wagemans2011), Van de Cruys, Chamberlain, & Wagemans (Van de Cruys et al.) propose that the understanding of the human brain as consistently engaged in predictive coding may parsimoniously explain the enjoyment of negative emotions in art reception (see also Armstrong & Cutting; Azevedo and Tsakiris; Nadal et al.). They argue that “consolation” and “solace” account for much of the emotional reward experienced in art reception. At the same time, they adopt a widely shared (modern) understanding of the arts that can barely be derived from the hypothesis of predictive coding only: “good artworks will also (temporarily) obstruct alignment” (Van de Cruys et al., para. 6). The resulting challenges (uncertainties) then trigger a process in which viewers strive for a reduction of their prediction error. If successful, such attunement, or regained homeostasis, “yields positive affect (even if the content of the inputs is about negative events)” (para. 6).

For the affective reward of uncertainty reduction, it is thus irrelevant whether the resolved uncertainty is arrived at in a happy ending, as in comedy, or a sad ending, as in tragedy. In this regard, Van de Cruys et al.'s hypothesis is in line with formalist approaches to artworks and actually very close to a formalist analysis of the musical and narrative tension-resolution trajectories that we discuss in section 4.1 of our article. However, their commentary entails no prediction as to why negative affect resulting from prediction errors (uncertainties) should be an inherently enjoyable ingredient of art reception rather than only a somehow necessary obstacle (prediction error) to be overcome on the road to consolation, with the pleasure primarily, if not exclusively, resulting from reducing the prediction error and its concomitant negative effect. Moreover, the prediction error reduction hypothesis cannot readily account for the enjoyment of artworks specifically designed to resist the resolution of ambiguities or other uncertainties (Knobloch-Westerwick & Keplinger Reference Knobloch-Westerwick and Keplinger2006).

The prime affective correlates of cognitive predictions and prediction errors are emotions related to cognitive mastery (Leder & Nadal Reference Leder and Nadal2014), ranging from the pleasures of successful coping to unresolved surprise, frustration, and outright annoyance (if the prediction error reduction fails). The latter are well established as nonpleasurable responses to artworks that are overdemanding to the point of being incompatible with enjoyment. It is less clear, however, how the prediction error (reduction) account of aesthetic enjoyment might explain the role of sadness or of being moved. After all, more often than not, these emotions have a strong bearing on feelings of social relatedness; such feelings cannot readily result from a purely formal successful coping with challenging visual or other compositional patterns. Thus, the theory of predictive coding–driven positive and negative affect is by no means co-extensive with the classical issue of the enjoyment of negative emotion, and Van de Cruys and Wagemans acknowledged this in their 2011 article. In any event, negotiating the overlap and the borders between this elegant, but largely purely formalist theory and our broader model, which also covers form-content interaction, would clearly be an interesting endeavor.

R4.2 Empathy, identification, immersion, transportation

Vuoskoski & Eerola stress that empathy, identification, and states of immersion and transportation may be further important variables in emotional responses to artworks. We do not challenge this view. Regarding empathy, we note that it is, in fact, included in our model, if only as an ingredient involved in many instances of being moved. Moreover, a very recent neuroscientific study might be interpreted as suggesting that empathy affects negative emotions in a distinct fashion (Ishizu & Zeki Reference Ishizu and Zeki2017; see also the commentary by Gerger et al.).

Regarding immersion, transportation, and identification, we have deliberately refrained from including these psychological mechanisms for two reasons. First, we know of no empirical evidence yet that they specifically play a role in rendering negative emotions enjoyable in contexts of art reception. Second, because these mechanisms are related primarily to narrative art forms, they would have even strengthened the bias in favor of literature and film found in larger sections of our article and, hence, potentially compromise its more general claims. Still, as suggested earlier in this Response, we are sympathetic with the idea.

R4.3 The role of historical learning and artistic misunderstanding

Bullot & Reber deplore that our model cannot account for how misunderstandings of an artist's intentions and historical learning regarding an artwork's context might affect the mechanisms of Distancing and Embracing. We readily acknowledge that our model does not include special provisions for such variables other than the black box on the left-hand side, which provides room for an undetermined variety of “social, cultural, and situational variables of art reception.”

We have also said very little about artworks “intended to prevent or at least inhibit embracing.” At the same time, by no means have we thereby denied such works their status as art. Our model is not at all about defining what is art and what is not. It exclusively hypothesizes: If we enjoy artworks involving negative emotions, then Distancing and Embracing typically are necessary processing factors. Undoubtedly, the well-made and often beautiful shields of ancient and current warriors are not likely to trigger aesthetic enjoyment supported by Distancing and Embracing in their enemies, at least not during fighting. However, in a peaceful environment, the mechanisms stipulated by our model could well become operative, and the same warriors might aesthetically enjoy the sight of these shields even if they depict the killing of enemies. Bullot & Reber's anecdotal reference to a beholder who reportedly discovered beauty in Damien Hirst's artwork consisting of a cow head infested with maggots likewise speaks in favor of, rather than against our model. We hypothesize that this beholder both distanced and embraced (and, thus, was able to enjoy) the potentially disgusting aspects of the exhibit and, hence, that the predictive power of our model may be stronger than Hirst's (presumable) intentions to elicit aversive feelings in viewers.