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Article published In: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Literature and Empathy
Edited by Paul Sopčák, Massimo Salgaro and J. Berenike Herrmann
[Scientific Study of Literature 6:1] 2016
► pp. 87–130

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Mood-empathic and aesthetic responses in poetry reception

A model-guided, multilevel, multimethod approach

 | Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
 | Center for Cognitive Neuroscience Berlin (CCNB), Berlin
 | Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (D.I.N.E.), Berlin
 | Department of Philosophy & Humanities, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
 | Department of Cognitive, Social and Organizational Psychology, Universidad de La Laguna, Spain
Published online: 21 December 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.6.1.06jac
In the present study we investigate factors shaping poetry reception at multiple levels of analysis. We use both qualitative and quantitative means for describing structural aspects of poems, scales for assessing subjective dimensions, as well as behavioral and peripheral-physiological measures. Applying such mixed analyses we tested three hypotheses derived from the Neurocognitive Poetics Model of literary reading (Jacobs, 2011, 2015a, 2015b): (a) the multilevel hypothesis stating that textual features at four relevant levels of textual analysis (supralexical, interlexical, lexical and sublexical) affect empathic/immersive and aesthetic-liking processes of poetry reception at all three levels of measurement (experiential, peripheral-physiological, and behavioral); (b) the mood empathy hypothesis stating that poems expressing moods of persons, atmospheres, situations, or objects should engage readers to mentally simulate and affectively resonate with the depicted state of affairs (see also Lüdtke et al., 2014); and (c) the aesthetic trajectory hypothesis stating that poems with a high amount of foregrounding facilitate aesthetic liking responses. The results are in line with all three hypotheses and raise a number of questions for future research on poetry reception.
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Wang, Yi, Man Zhang, Quanlei Yu, Zhijin Zhou & Fred Paas
2025. Effects of an Onscreen Instructor’s Emotions and Picture Types on Poetry Appreciation. The Journal of Experimental Education ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Xue, Shuwei, Ye Jun Son, Lianrui Yang & Shifa Chen
2024. Effects of Prior Knowledge and Peer Assessment on the Quality of English as a Foreign Language Poetry Writing. Empirical Studies of the Arts 42:2 ► pp. 331 ff. DOI logo
Johnson-Laird, Philip N. & Keith Oatley
2022. How poetry evokes emotions. Acta Psychologica 224 ► pp. 103506 ff. DOI logo
Papp-Zipernovszky, Orsolya, Anne Mangen, Arthur Jacobs & Jana Lüdtke
2022. Shakespeare sonnet reading: An empirical study of emotional responses. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 31:3 ► pp. 296 ff. DOI logo
Hugentobler, Katharina Gloria & Jana Lüdtke
2021. Micropoetry Meets Neurocognitive Poetics: Influence of Associations on the Reception of Poetry. Frontiers in Psychology 12 DOI logo
Pianzola, Federico, Giuseppe Riva, Karin Kukkonen & Fabrizia Mantovani
2021. Presence, flow, and narrative absorption: an interdisciplinary theoretical exploration with a new spatiotemporal integrated model based on predictive processing. Open Research Europe 1 ► pp. 28 ff. DOI logo
Pianzola, Federico, Giuseppe Riva, Karin Kukkonen & Fabrizia Mantovani
2021. Presence, flow, and narrative absorption: an interdisciplinary theoretical exploration with a new spatiotemporal integrated model based on predictive processing. Open Research Europe 1 ► pp. 28 ff. DOI logo
Jacobs, Arthur M., Berenike Herrmann, Gerhard Lauer, Jana Lüdtke & Sascha Schroeder
2020. Sentiment Analysis of Children and Youth Literature: Is There a Pollyanna Effect?. Frontiers in Psychology 11 DOI logo
Postarnak, Svetlana, São Luís Castro & Susana Silva
2020. The role of linguistic prosody in the responses to recited poetry. Scientific Study of Literature 10:2 ► pp. 228 ff. DOI logo
Usée, Franziska, Arthur M. Jacobs & Jana Lüdtke
2020. From Abstract Symbols to Emotional (In-)Sights: An Eye Tracking Study on the Effects of Emotional Vignettes and Pictures. Frontiers in Psychology 11 DOI logo
Xue, Shuwei, Arthur M. Jacobs & Jana Lüdtke
2020. What Is the Difference? Rereading Shakespeare’s Sonnets —An Eye Tracking Study. Frontiers in Psychology 11 DOI logo
Aryani, Arash
2019. On the crucial role of “Arousal” and “Saliency” in affective iconicity. Scientific Study of Literature 9:2 ► pp. 240 ff. DOI logo
Bruhn, Mark J.
2018. Citation analysis. Scientific Study of Literature 8:1 ► pp. 77 ff. DOI logo
Jacobs, Arthur M. & Roel M. Willems
2018. The Fictive Brain: Neurocognitive Correlates of Engagement in Literature. Review of General Psychology 22:2 ► pp. 147 ff. DOI logo
Jacobs, Arthur M. & Annette Kinder
2017. “The Brain Is the Prisoner of Thought”: A Machine-Learning Assisted Quantitative Narrative Analysis of Literary Metaphors for Use in Neurocognitive Poetics. Metaphor and Symbol 32:3 ► pp. 139 ff. DOI logo
Jacobs, Arthur M. & Annette Kinder
2018. What makes a metaphor literary? Answers from two computational studies. Metaphor and Symbol 33:2 ► pp. 85 ff. DOI logo
Jacobs, Arthur M. & Jana Lüdtke
2017. Immersion into narrative and poetic worlds. In Narrative Absorption [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 27], ► pp. 69 ff. DOI logo
Jacobs, Arthur M., Sarah Schuster, Shuwei Xue & Jana Lüdtke
2017. What’s in the brain that ink may character ….. Scientific Study of Literature 7:1 ► pp. 4 ff. DOI logo
Jacobs, Arthur M.
2015. The scientific study of literary experience. Scientific Study of Literature 5:2 ► pp. 139 ff. DOI logo
Jacobs, Arthur M.
2016. The scientific study of literary experience and neuro-behavioral responses to literature. Scientific Study of Literature 6:1 ► pp. 164 ff. DOI logo
Jacobs, Arthur M.
2018. The Gutenberg English Poetry Corpus: Exemplary Quantitative Narrative Analyses. Frontiers in Digital Humanities 5 DOI logo
Jacobs, Arthur M.
2018. (Neuro-)Cognitive poetics and computational stylistics. Scientific Study of Literature 8:1 ► pp. 165 ff. DOI logo
Jacobs, Arthur M.
2019. Sentiment Analysis for Words and Fiction Characters From the Perspective of Computational (Neuro-)Poetics. Frontiers in Robotics and AI 6 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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