Self-reference and emotional reaction drive aesthetic judgment.

Traditional philosophical inquiry, and more recently neuroscientific studies, have investigated the sources of artworks' aesthetic appeal. A substantial effort has been made to isolate the objective features contributing to aesthetic appreciation. While variables such as contrast or symmetry have been shown to robustly impact aesthetic judgment, they only account for a small portion of the intersubjective variability in aesthetic ratings. Recent multiprocess model of aesthetic appreciation could accommodate this finding by proposing that evaluative processes based on self-reference underpin the idiosyncrasy of aesthetic judgment. We tested this hypothesis in two behavioral studies, that were basically conceptual replications of our previous work, in which we took advantage of the self-reference effect on memory. We also tried to disentangle the role of self-reference and emotional reaction to artworks in guiding aesthetic judgments, by comparing an aesthetic judgment encoding condition to a self-reference condition (Study 1), and an emotional evaluation condition (Study 2). We show that artworks encoded in an aesthetic judgment condition exhibit a similar mnesic advantage compared to both the self-reference and the emotional evaluation encoding conditions. Moreover, retrospective emotional judgment correlates with both self-reference and aesthetic judgments ratings. These results suggest that a basic mechanism, appraisal of self-relevance, could ground aesthetic judgments.

Awe and the Experience of the Sublime: A Complex Relationship.

Awe seems to be a complex emotion or emotional construct characterized by a mix of positive (contentment, happiness), and negative affective components (fear and a sense of being smaller, humbler or insignificant). It is striking that the elicitors of awe correspond closely to what philosophical aesthetics, and especially Burke and Kant, have called "the sublime." As a matter of fact, awe is almost absent from the philosophical agenda, while there are very few studies on the experience of the sublime as such in the psychological literature. The aim of this paper is to throw light on the complex relationship between awe (as understood by psychologists) and the experience of the sublime (as discussed by philosophers). We distinguish seven ways of conceiving this relationship and highlight those that seem more promising to us. Once we have a clearer picture of how awe and the experience of the sublime are related, we can use it to enhance collaboration between these domains. We would be able to use empirical results about awe in a philosophical analysis of the experience of the sublime, which in turn can help us to design novel experimental hypotheses about the contexts in which we experience awe.

Phenomenal, bodily and brain correlates of fictional reappraisal as an implicit emotion regulation strategy.

The ability to modulate our emotional experience, depending on our current goal and context, is of critical importance for adaptive behavior. This ability encompasses various emotion regulation strategies, such as fictional reappraisal, at stake whenever one engages in fictional works (e.g., movies, books, video games, virtual environments). Neuroscientific studies investigating the distinction between the processing of real and fictional entities have reported the involvement of brain structures related to self-relevance and emotion regulation, suggesting a threefold interaction between the appraisal of reality, aspects of the Self, and emotions. The main aim of this study is to investigate the effect of implicit fictional reappraisal on different components of emotion, as well as on the modulatory role of autobiographical and conceptual self-relevance. While recording electrodermal, cardiac, and brain activity (EEG), we presented negative and neutral pictures to 33 participants, describing them as either real or fictional. After each stimulus, the participants reported their subjective emotional experience, self-relevance of the stimuli, as well as their agreement with their description. Using the Bayesian mixed-modeling framework, we showed that stimuli presented as fictional, compared with real, were subjectively appraised as less intense and less negative, and elicited lower skin conductance response, stronger heart-rate deceleration, and lower late positive potential amplitudes. Finally, these phenomenal and physiological changes did, to a moderate extent, rely on variations of specific aspects of self-relevance. Implications for the neuroscientific study of implicit emotion regulation are discussed.

The distinctive role of executive functions in implicit emotion regulation.

Several theoretical models stress the role of executive functions in emotion regulation (ER). However, most of the previous studies on ER employed explicit regulatory strategies that could have engaged executive functions, beyond regulatory processes per se. Recently, there has been renewed interest in implicit forms of ER, believed to be closer to daily-life requirements. While various studies have shown that implicit and explicit ER engage partially overlapping neurocognitive processes, the contribution of different executive functions in implicit ER has not been investigated. In the present study, we presented participants with negatively valenced pictures of varying emotional intensity preceded by short texts describing them as either fictional or real. This manipulation was meant to induce a spontaneous emotional down-regulation. We recorded electrodermal activity (EDA) and subjective reports of emotion arousal. Executive functions (updating, switching, and inhibition) were also assessed. No difference was found between the fictional and real condition on EDA. A diminished self-reported arousal was observed, however, when pictures were described as fictional for high- and mild-intensity material, but not for neutral material. The amount of down-regulation in the fictional condition was found to be predicted by interindividual variability in updating performances, but not by the other measures of executive functions, suggesting its implication even in implicit forms of ER. The relationship between down-regulation and updating was significant only for high-intensity material. We discuss the role of updating in relation to the consciousness of one's emotional state.

The paradox of fiction: Emotional response toward fiction and the modulatory role of self-relevance.

For over forty years, philosophers have struggled with the "paradox of fiction", which is the issue of how we can get emotionally involved with fictional characters and events. The few neuroscientific studies investigating the distinction between the processing of real and fictional entities have evidenced that midline cortical structures and lateral fronto-parietal regions are more engaged for real and fictional entities, respectively. Interestingly, the former network is engaged in autobiographical memory retrieval and self-reference, processes that are known to boost emotional reactivity, while the latter underpins emotion regulation. Thus, a possible modulation of the emotional response according to the nature (real or fictional) of the stimulus is conceivable. To test this hypothesis, we presented short emotional (negative and positive) and neutral video as fictional or real. For negative material, we found that subjective emotional experience, but not physiological arousal measured by electrodermal activity, was reduced in the fictional condition. Moreover, the amount of personal memories linked to the scenes counteracted this effect boosting the subjective emotional response. On the contrary, personal memories elicited by the scenes, but not fiction, modulate the emotional response for positive material. These results suggest that when a stimulus triggers a personal memory, the emotional response is less prone to be modulated by contextual factors, and suggest that personal engagement could be responsible for emotional reaction toward fiction. We discuss these results in the emotion regulation framework and underline their implications in informing theoretical accounts of emotion in the neuroscientific domain and the philosophical debate on the paradox of emotional response to fiction.

Perceptual hysteresis as a marker of perceptual inflexibility in schizophrenia.

People with schizophrenia are known to exhibit difficulties in the updating of their current belief states even in the light of disconfirmatory evidence. In the present study we tested the hypothesis that people with schizophrenia could also manifest perceptual inflexibility, or difficulties in the updating of their current sensory states. The presence of perceptual inflexibility might contribute both to the patients' altered perception of reality and the formation of some delusions as well as to their social cognition deficits. Here, we addressed this issue with a protocol of auditory hysteresis, a direct measure of sensory persistence, on a population of stabilized antipsychotic-treated schizophrenia patients and a sample of control subjects. Trials consisted of emotional signals (i.e., screams) and neutral signals (i.e., spectrally-rotated versions of the emotional stimuli) progressively emerging from white noise - Ascending Sequences - or progressively fading away in white noise - Descending Sequences. Results showed that patients presented significantly stronger hysteresis effects than control subjects, as evidenced by a higher rate of perceptual reports in Descending Sequences. The present study thus provides direct evidence of perceptual inflexibility in schizophrenia.