ARTICLE

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-018-0111-y OPEN

A psychology of the film

Ed S. Tan1,2

ABSTRACT The cinema as a cultural institution has been studied by academic researchers in
the arts and humanities. At present, cultural media studies are the home to the aesthetics and
critical analysis of film, film history and other branches of film scholarship. Probably less known
to most is that research psychologists working in social and life science labs have also con-
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tributed to the study of the medium. They have examined the particular experience that motion
pictures provide to the film audience and the mechanisms that explain the perception and
comprehension of film, and how movies move viewers and to what effects. This article reviews
achievements in psychological research of the film since its earliest beginnings in the 1910s. A
leading issue in the research has been whether understanding films is a bottom-up process, or a
top-down one. A bottom-up explanation likens film-viewing to highly automated detection of
stimulus features physically given in the supply of images; a top-down one to the construction of
scenes from very incomplete information using mental schemata. Early film psychologists tried
to pinpoint critical features of simple visual stimuli responsible for the perception of smooth
movement. The riddle of apparent motion has not yet been solved up to now. Gestalt psy-
chologists were the first to point at the role of mental structures in seeing smooth movement,
using simple visual forms and displays. Bottom-up and top-down approaches to the compre-
hension of film fought for priority from the 60s onwards and became integrated at the end of the
century. Gibson’s concept of direct perception led to the identification of low-level film-stylistic
cues that are used in mainstream film production, and support film viewers in highly automated
seamless perception of film scenes. Hochberg’s argument for the indispensability of mental
schemata, too, accounted for the smooth cognitive construction of portrayed action and scenes.
Since the 90s, cognitive analyses of narration in film by film scholars from the humanities have
revolutionised accounts of the comprehension of movies. They informed computational content
analyses that link low-level film features with meaningful units of film-story-telling. After a
century of research, some perceptual and cognitive mechanisms that support our interaction
with events in the real world have been uncovered. Today, the film experience at large has
reappeared on the agenda. An integration of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms is sought in
explaining the remarkable intensity of the film experience. Advances are now being made in
grasping what it is like to enjoy movies, by describing the absorbing and moving qualities of the
experience. As an example, a current account of film viewers' emotional experience is pre-
sented. Further advances in our understanding of the film experience and its underlying
mechanisms can be expected if film psychologists team up with cognitive film studies, computer
vision and the neurosciences. This collaboration is also expected to allow for research into
mainstream and other genres as forms of art.

1 Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. 2 Honorary professor Amsterdam School of

Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to
E.S.T. (email: [email protected])

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ARTICLE PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | DOI: 10.1057/s41599-018-0111-y

An agenda for the psychology of the film

A
depends not on recognition of similarity with the real world or
t the time of the first kinetoscope and cinema exhibitions practical needs, but on the sense of an 'inner agreement and
in 1894–1895, thanks to devices such as the Phenakisto- harmony [of the film’s parts]' (p. 73).5 But in order to qualify as
scope, Zoetrope and Praxinoscope, moving images had art, according to Münsterberg film was not to deviate too much
been popular for decades. Just before that time, academic psy- from realistic representation that distinguishes theatrical movies
chology turned to the identification of the mechanisms under- from non-mainstream forms.
lying the functioning of the mind. Perception psychologists began Münsterberg’s agenda is in retrospect quite complete. The
to study apparent movement of experimental visual stimuli under detailed investigation of psychological mechanisms and aesthetics
controlled conditions because they found moving stimuli inter- of film is followed by a last chapter on the social functions of the
esting cases in human perception, or as part of the study of photoplay. The thoughts forwarded in it are more global than
psychological aesthetics founded by Gustav Fechner and Wilhelm those on perception and aesthetics. The immediate effect of
Wundt. The publication of The Photoplay: A Psychological Study theatrical films on their audience is enjoyment due to their freeing
marked the beginning of the psychology of the film. Hugo the imagination, and their easy accessibility to consciousness
Münsterberg was trained by Wundt and recruited by William 'which no other art can furnish us' (p. 95). Enjoyment comes with
James to lead the experimental psychology lab at Harvard. additional gratifications such as a feeling of vitality, experiencing
Importantly, Münsterberg was also an avid cinemagoer as his emotions, learning and above all aesthetic emotion.
analyses of theatrical films of his time may tell, and a professing In a final section behavioral effects of successful films are
cinephile at that. Münsterberg set two tasks for the study of the discussed. Here the film psychologist vents concerns on what we
film: one was to describe the functioning of psychological now refer to as undesirable attitude changes and social learning,
mechanisms in the reception of film; the other to give an account especially in young audiences. The agenda of today's social sci-
of film as an artistic medium. ence research on mass media effects (e.g. Dill, 2013) is not all that
Münsterberg shared his contemporaries’ and even today’s different from Münsterberg's in the last chapter of The Photoplay.
spectators’ fascination for the wonder of moving images and their The two tasks that Münsterberg worked on set the agenda for
apparent reality. He described the film experience as a 'unique the psychology of film in the century after The Photoplay. It is
inner experience' that due to the simultaneous character of reality clearly recognisable in the psychology of the film as we know it
and pictorial representation “brings our mind into a peculiar today.6 But the promising debut made in 1916 was not followed
complex state” (p. 24). up until the nineteen seventies, or so it seems. James Gibson
In the first part of The Photoplay, explores how film char- lamented in his last book on visual perception that whereas the
acteristically addresses the mechanisms of the basic psychological technology of the cinema had reached peak levels of applied
functions investigated by experimental psychology—namely science, its psychology had so far not developed at all (1979, p.
perception, attention, memory and emotion.1 In The Photoplay 292). The cognitive revolution in psychology of the 60s paved the
the imagination is the psychological faculty that theatrical movies way for its upsurge in the early 80s. But some qualifications need
ultimately play upon; attention, perception, memory and emotion to be made on the seeming moratorium. First, Rudolf Arnheim
are also directed by the film, but contribute to the film experience developed since the 1920s a psychology of artistic film form.
as building blocks for the imagination in the first place. One of Second, although not visible as a coherent psychology of the film,
the ways that films entertain the imagination is by mimicking the laboratory research on issues in visual perception of the moving
psychological functions. Film scenes may represent as-if percep- image—in particular studies of apparent movement—continued.
tions, as-if thoughts, as-if streams of associations, and as-if
emotions or more generally: display subjectivity.2 Second, the film
creates an imagined world that deviates from real world scenes as Gestalt psychology and film form
we perceive these in real life. Liberated from real life perceptual Rudolf Arnheim’s essays published first in 1932 added analytic
constraints involves the spectator’s self in 'shaping reality by the force to Münsterberg’s conviction that film is not an imitation of
demands of our soul' (p. 41). Third, Münsterberg has a nuanced life. Film and Reality (1957) highlights shortcomings of film in
view of the automaticity of responses to film. On the one hand, it representing scenes as we know them from natural perception.7
is the spectator’s choice—based on their interest—which ideas In the same essay, it is pointed out that comparing a filmic
from memory and the imagination to fit to images presented on representation of a scene with its natural perception is what
screen; they are felt as 'our subjective supplements' (p. 46). On the analytic philosophers would call an error of category. In The
other, the film’s suggestions function to control associated ideas, Making of Film (1957) Arnheim presented an inventory of for-
'… not felt as our creation but as something to which we have to mative means for artistic manipulations of visual scenes,
submit' (p. 46). And yet in Münsterberg’s view the film does not including delimitation and point of view, distance to objects and
dictate psychological responses in any way.3 mobility of framing. It is argued that chosen manipulations often
Finally, The Photoplay provides abundant and compelling go against the most realistic options. For example, ideal view-
introspective reports of the film experience and so probes into the points and canonical distances are often dismissed in favour of
phenomenology of film, that is, what it is like to watch a movie. I more revealing options.8 Arnheim’s aesthetics of film gravitates
think it is fair to say that for Münsterberg the film experience is towards acknowledged artistic productions more than to the
the ultimate explanandum for a psychology of the film. In order 'naturalistic narrative film' (e.g., 1957, p. 116–117) the more
to account for that phenomenology by mechanism of the mind moderate art form that Münsterberg tended to prefer.
proper descriptions of the film experience are needed, and Arnheim was informed by such founders of Gestalt psychology
introspective reports are an indispensable starting point for these. as Wertheimer, Köhler and Koffka. This school held that natural
The other task Münsterberg set himself was to propose an perception results from the mind’s activity. It organises sensory
account of the film as a form of art. Part two of The Photoplay inputs into patterns according to formal principles such as sim-
proposes that the film experience includes an awareness of plicity, regularity, order and symmetry. Arnheim developed into
unreality of perceived scenes. This awareness is taken as funda- the leading Gestalt theorist of aesthetics of the 20th century. In
mental for psychological aesthetics; all forms of art are perceived his 1974 book he analysed a great number of pictorial, sculptural,
to go beyond the mere imitation of nature.4 Münsterberg showed architectural, musical and poetic works of art while only rarely
himself a formalist in that he theorised that aesthetic satisfaction referring to film.9 The cornerstone aesthetic property of art works

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including film is expression, defined by Arnheim as 'modes of integrative role in distinguishing what has changed from one
organic or inorganic behaviour displayed in the dynamic image to another. This integrating mechanism in film viewing is
appearance of perceptual objects or events' (1974, p. 445). exactly the same as in perceiving motion in real world scenes.
Expression’s dynamic appearance is a structural creation of the Mechanistic explanations have since been founded on growing
mind imposing itself on sound, touch, muscular sensations and insights in the neuroscience of vision, such as single cell activity
vision. Expressive qualities are in turn, the building blocks of recordings in response to precisely localised stimulus features.13
symbolic meaning that art works including film add to the 'Preprocessing' of visual input before it arrives in the cortex takes
representation of objects and events as we know them in the outer place in the retina and the lateral geniculate nucleus, which have
world. Thus, Arnheim’s theory of expression and meaning in the specialised cells or trajectories for apprehending various aspects
arts seems to echo Münsterberg’s formalist position on the per- of motion. There are major interactions between perceptual
ception of 'inner harmony' as the determinant of film spectators’ modules.14 Physiological and anatomical findings in the primate
aesthetic satisfaction. visual system, as well as clinical evidence, support the distinction
of separate channels for the perception of movement on the one
hand, and form, colour and depth on the other (Livingstone and
Apparent motion Hubel, 1987). Research on how exactly the cortical integration
Münsterberg shared the amazement that moving images awa- systems for vision are organised has not yet come to a close. A
kened in early film audiences. He considered the experience of variety of anatomical subsystems have been identified15, and there
movement a central issue for the psychology of the film. The is room for task variables in the explanation of motion percep-
experience of movement in response to a series of changing still tion.16 The operation of task variables in presumably automated
pictures has been studied in psychology and physiology under the processes (e.g., attentional set, induced by specific task instruc-
rubric of apparent motion.10 In Münsterberg’s days, international tions) complicates accounts of apparent motion and the percep-
psychology labs were probing the perception of movement in tion of movement based on lowest processing levels.
response to experimental stimuli that were perceived as moving Non-trivial and clear-cut contributions of the mind to smooth
images. Well-known examples include apparent motion induced apparent motion have been proposed by Gestalt psychologists.
by the subsequent views of single stationary lines in different Arnheim (1974) considered the perception of movement as
positions that result in phi movement, the perception of one subsidiary to that of change. The mind uses Gestalt principles
moving shape or line. Researchers in this area have continued to such as good continuation and object consistency to perceive
study the perception of movement in film as only one of many patterns in ongoing stimuli. Movement is the perception of
interesting visual stimuli, such as shapes painted on rotating developing sequences and events.17 Gestalt psychologists have
disks, or dynamic computer-generated lights, shapes and objects attempted to identify stimulus features that are perceived as a
of many kinds. Why and how we see motion has been as basic to spatiotemporal pattern of 'good' motion, and they discovered
the study of visual perception as questions of perception of col- various types of apparent motion have been distinguished as a
our, depth, and shape. Helmholtz proposed that what we need to function of stimulus features. In an overview volume, Kolers
explain is how retinal images that correspond one-to one, i.e., (1972) presented phi and beta motion as the major variants. Phi,
optically with a scene in the world are transformed into mental the most famous, was first documented by Wertheimer in 1912.
images, or percepts that we experience. In the case of apparent An image of an object is presented twice in succession in different
motion, we also need to understand how a succession of retinal positions.18 Pure or beta motion that is objectless motion, was the
images are perceived as one or more objects in motion11 novel and amazing observation; the perception seemed to be a
Apparent motion in film viewing needs to be smooth,12 and sum or integration by the mind beyond the stimulus parts, and
depends on frame rates and masking effects. (The latter effects asked for an explanation. It is also experienced when the objects
refer to dampening of the visual impact of one frame by a sub- in the subsequent presentations are different.
sequently presented black frame). Wertheimer and those after him looked for mechanisms of the
Münsterberg’s conviction that the perception of movement mind that could complement the features of the stimulus
needs a cognitive contribution from the viewer clashes with responsible for apparent motion in its various forms.19 Other
alternative explanations that rely on prewired visual mechanisms studies of apparent motion, too, indicated that simple models of
that automatically and immediately pick up the right stimulus stimulus features alone could not explain apparent motion.20 One
features causing an immediate perception of motion, without the of the best examples of what the cognitive system adds to sti-
mind adding anything substantial. The inventors of nineteenth mulus features is induced motion (Duncker, 1929). When we see a
century moving image devices explained the illusion of move- small target being displaced relative to a framework surrounding
ment by the slowness of the eye, possibly following P.M. Roget’s it, we invariably see the target moving irrespective of whether it is
report on apparent motion to the Royal Society in 1824. In the the target or the frame that is displaced. Ubiquitous film examples
early years of cinema, the persistence of vision account was meant are shots of moving vehicles, with mobile or static framing.
to add precision to this explanation. It proposed that the retina, In this summary and incomplete overview of the field, we could
the optic nerve or the brain could not keep up with a rapid not make a strict distinction between mechanist and cognitive
succession of projected frames, and that afterimages would bridge explanations for the perception of movement in film. The current
the intervals between subsequent frames. Anderson and Fisher state of research does not allow for it.21 Kolers’s conclusions on
(1978) and Anderson and Anderson (1993) have argued why the the state of the field closing his 1972 volume on motion per-
notion is false and misleading. It suggests that film viewers’ ception seem still valid. He inferred from then extant research
perceptual system sluggishly pile up retina images on top of one that there must be separate mechanisms for extracting informa-
another. However, this would lead them to blur which obviously tion from the visual stimulus and for selecting and supplementing
is not the case. The Andersons refer to the explanation as a myth the information into a visual experience of smooth object motion
because it is based on a mistaken conception of film viewing as a or motion brief. He concluded that 'The impletions of apparent
passive process. Even with the characteristically very small motion make it clear that although the visual apparatus may
changes between subsequent frames characteristic of motion select from an array [of] features to which it responds, the fea-
picture projection, the visual system performs an active tures themselves do not create the visual experience. Rather, that

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experience is generated from within, by means of supplementa- on the basis of the nature of the disturbances, e.g., as terrestrial,
tive mechanisms whose rules are accomodative and rationalizing animate, or chemical events. Furthermore, the direct tuning of the
rather than analytical' (p.198). But even if after Koler's analysis perceptual senses to the structures of the environment enable an
some perceptual (Cutting, 1986) or brain mechanisms (Zacks, immediate perception of affordances, for example the slope of a
2015) have been identified today we still do not know enough hill causes the direct perception of 'climbability'.
about the self-supplied supplementations.22 The experience of motion pictures according to Gibson
involves a dynamic optical flow exactly like the one an observer
would have when being present at the filmed scene.25 Film
Perception and cognition of scenes
represents the world to the senses that are calibrated to that
Mental representation and event comprehension. Contributions
world. The field of view of the camera becomes the optic array to
of the mind can go considerably beyond apparent motion, i.e., the
the viewer (Gibson, 1979, p. 298). Perception of objects,
perception of smooth motion from one frame to another. The
movement, events and affordances is direct and realist, based as
cognitive revolution in academic psychology that took off in the
it is on the same invariants and affordances that the scene in the
1960s broadened the conceptualisation of contributions of the
real world would offer. Deviations from these as emphasised by
mind to the film experience beyond the narrower stimulus-
cognitivist film psychologists from Münsterberg through Arn-
response paradigms that had dominated psychological science
heim to Hochberg as we will shortly see, are largely taken as non-
until the 1960s. The cognitive revolution went beyond Gestalt
representative exceptions.
notions of patterns applied by the mind on stimulus information.
A major affordance offered by conventional movies is empathy
It introduced the concept of mental representation as a key to
with characters. Empathy presupposes that we understand what
understanding the relation between sensory impressions from the
happens to characters. Scenes present their actions, reactions and
environment on the one hand, and people’s responses to it.
feelings. However, most scenes are not continuous. How do we
Moreover, these cognitive structures were seen functional in
understand scenes presented in pieces, and what are the limits to
mental operations such as retrieval and accommodation of
our understanding? Gibson’s reply to the question of how
schemas from memory, inference and attribution. These were
continuity is perceived in scenes that is, smooth movement and
quite complex in comparison to perceptual and psychophysical
unitary events across cuts would be that the perceptual system
responses. In the past 30 years, they have come to encompass
extracts the same invariants from the two shots on either side of
event, action, person, cultural, narrative and formal-stylistic
the cut. The elegant explanation again rests upon a presumed
schemas. The cognitive turn in film psychology has stimulated a
correspondence between perception of real world scenes and film
growing exchange with humanist film scholarship, resulting in
scenes.
advances in the elaboration of cognitive structural notions. Early
Gibson inspired important theorising on the film experience,
applications of the cognitive perspective in the psychology of the
notably by Anderson and Cutting that we will turn to shortly.
film can be found in the 1940s and 50s in work by Albert
Here we emphasise that his direct perception account of the film
Michotte (1946) and Heider and Simmel.23
experience stands in perpendicular opposition to the key
innovation that the cognitive turn introduced in experimental
Against mental representation: direct perception of film events. psychology. Gibson denied the necessity of mental representa-
The psychology of the film as a subdiscipline of academic psy- tions in the perception of objects and events, be it in real scenes or
chology really took off in the late 1970s. Münsterberg’s broad in film.
agenda that had been scattered across isolated studies of mainly
movement perception regained general acclaim. This was due first
to the booming supply and consumption of moving images Cognitive schemas and the canonical set-up of the cinema. The
through media television and computer-generated imagery since role of mental representations, be they cognitive principles or
the 60s. Second, the cognitive turn in experimental psychology schemas or other mental structures was argued over a lifetime of
renewed an interest in perception and cognition as it occurs in work in the psychology of film by Julian Hochberg. A perception
natural ecologies. This is the backdrop against which James psychologist with an interest in pictorial representations and their
Gibson (1979) noted the virtual absence of a psychology of the aesthetics, he devoted a large part of his work to identify what is
moving image, motivating his chapter on the film experience. The given in film stimuli and how perception goes beyond that, in
chapter was important in that it applied his highly influential often ingenuous demonstrations and experiments. (The demon-
ecological principles of perception of real world scenes to per- strations are, in fact, introspective observations of film perception
ception in the cinema. Gibson’s general theory of visual percep- under exactly specified, reproducible stimulus conditions). A
tion (e.g., Gibson, 1979) hinges on the notion that the visual comprehensive overview can be found in Hochberg (1986).26 His
system has evolved to extract relevant information from the world legacy should be referred to as the Hochberg and Brooks oeuvre,
in a direct fashion. A scene presents itself to the observer as an because his wife Virginia Brooks a psychologist and filmmaker,
ambient optical array that immediately and physically reflects the contributed such a great deal to it. Hochberg found that cognitive
structure of the real world. Changes and transitions in the flow of schemata are necessary in the perception of film for two reasons.
the optical array are due to natural causes such as alternations of The most profound one is that completely stimulus-driven (or
lighting intensity of the scene, e.g., due to clouds, or movement of 'bottom-up') accounts of the perception of movement, events, and
objects in the scene or of the observer. These variations in the scene continuity do not really explain the experience. For
optical flow enable the automatic pick-up of invariants. Example example, Hochberg and Brooks point out that neurophysiological
invariants are the change in size of portions in the array, and the motion detectors do not explain motion perception, that is, they
density of texture in that portion when the observer gets closer to, 'amend but do not demolish' an account based on a mental
or farther away from the object.24 The changes in these para- representation of motion (Hochberg and Brooks, 1996b, p. 226).
meters are linked with depth-information in a way that is con- The same would go for any other direct perception account,
stant across different scenes, observer speeds, lighting conditions, including Gibson’s optics plus invariant extraction model. The
etc. Invariants enable the direct perception of the real world in the more practical argument is that the direct perception account fails
service of adaptive action. Disturbances of the optic flow can to pose limits to the scope of its application, leaving thresholds
automatically be perceived as events. The events are categorised and ceiling conditions for the mechanisms out of consideration.

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Fig. 1 Example of perceptual disregard in the cinema. Hochberg (2007) discusses the view of objects moving in front of a landscape. In normal film viewing
flatness of studio-backgrounds and quasi-camera movement is disregarded. Traditional films can use a painted or projected landscape at the backdrop of
the set, and panning camera movements instead of a really mobile camera to create a convincing impression in the viewer of following a moving object in
the scene’s space. A cycling woman is followed in a pan shot moving from left to right; frames A and B constitute the beginning and the end of the panning
shot. In normal perception in the real-world objects on the horizon seem to move in the direction of the moving subject, whereas nearby objects move in
opposite direction. Panning involves a stationary viewpoint, causing the image to lack this 'motion parallax'. For example, the scarecrow in the middle
ground of frame B should be further to the left from the ridge on the horizon than in frame A (DA < DB), but the distance between the objects has remained
identical (DA = DB). However, the lack of parallax and resulting apparent flatness can be and is disregarded and viewers experience smooth self-motion
parallel to the moving object. Disregard such a this is part and parcel of normal film viewing or the "ecology of the cinema".

The canonical set-up of cinematic devices for recording and dis- Viewers’ schema-based continuous perception of scenes is
playing motion pictures has evolved to produce good impressions supported by the ways that traditional cinema tells its stories.
of depth, smooth and informative motion, emphasis on relevant The presentation of an overall view in so-called 'establishing
objects and continuity of action, often violating the course of shots' followed by a 'break-down' of its object into subsequently
direct perception in comparable real world scenes. Figure 1 pre- presented part views is a cornerstone procedure in classical
sents a demonstration of active disregard that viewers of main- continuity film style (Bordwell and Thompson, 1997/1979).
stream movies typically display. (See also Cutting & Vishton A smooth understanding of non-overlapping cuts may require
(1995) on contextual use of depth-information). dedicated knowledge of discursive story units and rules for their
The most immediate demonstration of apparent motion is ordering that only literary analysis types of study can reveal
Duncker’s induced motion referred to above, a cinematic effect (Hochberg, 1986, pp. 22–50). Hochberg and Brooks (1996a, p.
because it is dependent on canonical projection within a frame. 382) pointed out that theoretical or empirical proposals as to the
The best analytic examples are about the perception of events in nature of such representations were lacking. They found Gestalt
filmed dance.27 For Hochberg and Brooks an ecological approach principles unsatisfactory (Hochberg, 1998). Current film psychol-
to perception in the cinema needs to take the ecology of the ogists have taken up this challenge as we shall see briefly.
cinema into account. As a final contribution of Hochberg and Brooks’ to the
The necessity of cognitive schemas in film perception was psychology of the film, we would like to highlight their view of
pointed out most pregnantly in Hochberg’s dealing with the film spectators as partners motivated to deliver their share in a
comprehension of shot transitions or cuts. It was argued that communicative effort. Film viewers contribute to the canonical
known sensory integration and Gibson’s extraction of invariants, setup of the cinema in that they are astutely aware of the
fail to account for viewers’ comprehension of frequent and simple filmmaker’s communicative intentions: '… the viewer expects that
cinematic events like elision of space and time. Overlap in the film maker has undertaken to present something in an
contents between successive shots can be hard to identify or lack intelligible fashion and will not provide indecipherable strings of
at all. Hochberg and Brooks proposed a principled alternative: shots' (Hochberg, 1986, p. 22–53). Viewers must be assumed to
films play in the mind’s eye. Viewers construct an off-screen have an associated motivation to explore the views presented to
mental space from separate views, and they can link two them. In a series of inventive experiments, Hochberg and Brooks
successive views by the relation of each of these to this space. gathered evidence for an impetus to gather visual information.
In constructing a mental space, overlap may even be overruled by Looking preference increased with cutting rate and with
other cues, that have nothing to do with any invariance. The complexity of shot contents. Visual momentum, or viewer
construction must involve event schemas and cognitive principles interest, (Brooks and Hochberg, 1976; Hochberg and Brooks,
removed from anything immediately given in the film. Schemas 1978) as they termed it is the absorbing experience typical of
may indeed outperform (mathematical) invariants picked up cinema viewing. These studies help us to understand how current
from the optical array offered by the screen. Hochberg and cutting strategies meet the viewers’ typical motivation for
Brooks (1996b) show, for example how gaze direction of film cognitive enquiry. The reward of comprehension is carefully
characters or personae in subsequent shots may be more effective dosed by varying the time allowed to the viewer to inspect objects
in the construction of a continuous mental scene than over- and scenes, dependent on their novelty and complexity.
lapping spatial or visual symbolic contents. 28 Mental schemas Hochberg’s demonstrations of the involvement of mental
seem to be indispensable in the comprehension of sequences of structures in understanding portrayed events was in large part
completely non-overlapping cuts. A famous demonstration by based on introspective evidence. They have been criticised for
Hochberg and Brooks is reproduced in Fig. 2. The succession of relying too heavily on top-down control of perception by too
shots is readily understood when it is preceded by the intricate mental structures, by Gibson and others.29 Current
presentation of a cross, which provides the integrating schema. research in the cognitive structure tradition uses more

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Fig. 2 Role of mental schemas in the comprehension of continuous space across shots as discussed in Hochberg and Brooks (1996, 2007). a The sequence
of eight static shots does not seem to make sense. b A static preview of the entire object as in A) would activate a mental schema of a cross. Subsequent
shots are then recognised as consecutive camera relocations, counter-clockwise rotations offering subsequent views of corners From Hochberg and Brooks
(2007). Adding a shot of the cross moving diagonally to the lower left corner of the frame would smoothen the transition between the entire object view
and the view of its top right corner further and facilitate the perception of the subsequent parts. Hochberg and Brooks (1996) reported that replacing one of
the shots by a blank frame does not lead to confusion. For example, if shot 7 were replaced by a blank frame, the view of the lower left angle of the cross
would seem to have been skipped, and shot 8 would be recognised as to present a view of the lower left corner. That is, the trajectory of the views would
remain intact in keeping with the overall view of the object. This illustrates all the more the leading role of the schema of a cross in the perception of its
parts.

sophisticated experimental set-ups. Inspiration has been drawn demonstrate through film analyses how film viewers construct
from theories of discourse processing in cognitive science. In this multi-layered representations of a film’s action from the point of
research, the relationship of 'top-down' use of schemas in scene view of different characters, the viewer and even from the nar-
comprehension with 'bottom-up' processing of stimulus features rator’s or filmmaker’s. For example, viewer and character per-
has become an important question.30 Zacks has extensively spectives may clash as in dramatic irony, or the narrator may
investigated how film viewers segment the ongoing stream of create false beliefs on story events in viewers.
images and extract meaningful events and actions from it. Viewer
segmentation depends on automatically detected changes in a
situation (Zacks, 2004). Detection of the changes requires only Continuity of events and viewer attention. Hochberg’s question
minimal use of schemas, and triggers automated perceptual- of what the mental schemas look like that enable us to perceive
motor simulations of events and subevents such as actions.31 smooth progress of events across film cuts has recently been
Segmentation follows the logic of events in the real world. Most addressed by the next generation of film psychologists. They have
importantly, multiple events can be organised in a hierarchical or sought answers in profound analyses of the canonical setup
linear fashion, as scenes, sets of events and subevents or actions delivered by the founders of cognitive film theory in the huma-
(Zacks, 2013). nities, such as Bordwell (1985, 2008), and Anderson (1996).
Bordwell’s extensive analyses of classical film narrative and his
account of the viewer’s mental activity in the comprehension of
Theory of mind and layered meaning of events. Extracting the film’s story-world suggest a film-psychological hypothesis on
events in understanding film scenes needs more than retrieving the experience of continuity: Classical Hollywood film style serves
schemas of real world events. The fact that they are presented smooth progress of the narrative. Continuity editing ensures
with an idea in mind, is reflected in their understanding. fluency across shot transitions. Shot A cues cognitive schema-
Understanding film scenes and especially characters, their based or narrative expectations that are subsequently matched in
actions, plans and goal has been argued to require a so-called shot B. Expectations can be perceptual or cognitive, i.e., requiring
Theory of Mind (Levin et al., 2013). TOM is a system of cognitive inferences supported by event schemas. Anderson added a Gib-
representations of what beliefs, needs, desires, intentions and sonian perspective, arguing that the perception of film scenes
feelings people have in their interaction with others and the mimics the perception of real world scenes. Continuity shooting
world. It is acquired in early childhood, when children under- and editing closely follow the constraints of the human perceptual
stand that others, too, have an internal life, similar to but also systems that have evolved to 'extract' continuity from changing
different from one’s own beliefs and feelings. Levin et al. explain views of scenes in the real world. Recent research into the
how use of TOM, also referred to as mentalising is necessary for experience of smooth development of events and scenes across
an elementary understanding of film character actions and feel- shot transitions draws on these principles of continuity narra-
ings. For example, character gaze following that underlies our tion.32 Framing, editing and sound finetune the viewer’s top-
perception of what characters feel or want to do with respect to down search to focus on candidate target stimuli. A quite com-
an object that they look at requires TOM. TOM underlies plete and accurate explanation was offered by Tim Smith. His
grasping spatial (and action-) relations in scene comprehension Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continuity (2012) explains the
across cuts using gaze following. Understanding relations between viewer’s sense of smooth progress by the continuity editing
more complex events require schema-controlled theorizing on principles that mainstream filmmakers tend to adhere to. AToCC
what people believe, do, think, and feel. Finally, Levin et al. breaks away from Hochberg’s analyses to the degree that it holds

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that viewers do not need intricate spatial or semantic schemas to research has recently shown that the distraction effect of inserted
construct continuous events from separate shots. Rather it is built low-level attention triggers is quite limited (Hinde et al., 2017) In
on the Gibsonian principle that perceiving continuity in film line with this notion of top-down attention control overriding
scenes derives from the continuity that we experience in per- bottom-up attention triggers, Magliano and Zacks (2011)
ceiving scenes in the natural world. The ecology of the cinema demonstrated that the perception of cuts is suppressed by higher
renders it sufficient to follow a number of simple spatiotemporal order processes related to the construction of complex events.
guidelines. Continuity editing film style guides viewers’ attention Gibson’s idea of invariants in optical arrays can now be made
in seamlessly following action across cuts. Attention, that is the concrete, enabling the prediction of bottom-up controlled
focused selection of objects in a shot by the viewer, i.e., what and attention and perception from objectively identified features.
where the viewer directs their gaze, is led by the filmmaker. The Developments in computer vision, image and sound analysis have
viewers’ gaze in shot A is directed to the part of the screen where paved the way for automated extraction of features and patterns
the target of interest in shot B, that is after the cut, will be. The in visual and auditory stimuli in terms of multiple dimensions.
shift of attention from one portion to another of the screen in For example, machine extraction of saliency as a feature
shot A is shortly followed by the cut, and because the gaze 'lands' predictive of bottom-up attention has been developed and
in the right place in shot B, the cut has become invisible.33 The applied in numerous computer vision applications. A much-
theory of continuity perception adds precise levels of analysis to cited article by Itti and Koch (2001) illustrates the idea for static
the construction of mental scene spaces that Hochberg proposed. images. Specialised neural network algorithms detect features
It distinguishes higher level and lower level control of attention. such as colour, intensity, orientations, etc. in parallel over the
Higher-level ones include 'perceptual inquiries' as Hochberg and entire visual field. Each feature is represented in a feature map, in
Brooks (1978a) called them. The expectations or questions that which neurons compete for saliency. Feature maps are combined
guide the gaze may be minimally articulated, e.g., 'what or whom into a saliency map. A last network sequentially scans the saliency
are these characters looking at' as in gaze following, but the map, moving from the most salient location to the next less
operation of higher level cognitive schemas are not excluded. The salient one and so on. 36 An excellent explanation of how to
best demonstration to date of the control of focus of attention by obtain saliency maps is given at a Matlab page.37
the narrative is given in research on suspense and its effects on Psychologists of film in their attempts to explain the
film viewer gazes by Bezdek et al. (2015) and Bezdek and Gerrig extraordinary smooth and intense perceptual experience that
(2017). 34 Their results can be taken to imply that suspense, a mainstream film typically provides, currently seek to join forces
state of high absorption, is associated with focal attention to with computer vision scientists. In a next step, they may seek
story-world details supervised by expectations created by the collaboration with vision labs in the world that attempt to link
narrative (see also Doicaru, 2016). their low-level film image feature analyses with film narrative
The study of film viewers' attention has delivered a firm structures and viewer responses.38
account of the role of the ubiquitous Hollywood continuity film The work of perception researcher James Cutting has carried
style in the typical experience of smoothly flowing film scenes and the psychology of the film into the next stage of the Gibsonian
stories that audiences allover the world have. (See for a review ecological approach, while also linking it with insights in the
Smith, Levin & Cutting, 2012). structure of film narrative from humanities scholarship.39 In an
interesting essay on the perception of scenes in the real world and
in film Cutting (2005) summarised the ecological perspective on
A lead role in perception for cinematic low-level features?. perception stating that understanding how we perceive the real
Experimental psychology has always aspired basic explanations of world helps to grasp how we perceive film and vice versa.40 In the
perceptual responses, preferably through transparent mechanistic last decade Cutting developed powerful computational content
associations with physically observable stimulus conditions. The analysis methods that reveal the patterning of low-level features
role of high-level narrative schema-based attention in smooth in relation to dimensions of film style and technology, in
film experiences discussed in the previous section, is subject to representative samples of Hollywood films of well over a hundred
debates in which experimental data support arguments pro and titles. The theoretical starting point of the approach is that movies
con. To begin with, AToCC emphasises the role of leading exhibit reality. The psychologist Cutting subscribes to the
expectations in following cuts, but more akin to the Gibsonian analytical distinctions made in literary and film theories between
approach of visual perception than to Hochberg’s schema posi- plot, form and style of a narrative on the one hand, and the
tion as it is, it tends to stress lower level features as directing represented story-world on the other. The Gibsonian proposal is
attention bottom-up, too or even more so. One lower level is that analyses of the fabula or story-world (i.e., the action, events,
given by film-stylistic devices, for instance the use of sound that characters and so on) should lead to identification of syuzhet
can orient viewers to direct their gazes to the next shot’s portion features (i.e., formal and stylistic features that are physically given
of the screen where the sound’s origin will be shown. Another are in the film stimulus or can be perceived without substantial
lower level stimulus features in a narrower and technical sense, instruction) functional in the perception and understanding of
such as bright lights and movements with sudden onset that that story-world; vice versa, variations in form and style reflect
automatically attract attention due to the make-up of the senses variations in the portrayed story-world. Cutting’s definition of
and the brain. Especially movement was shown by Smith to be an low-level film features used in the analyses was informed by
extraordinary low level attentional cue. The power of low level analyses of narrative, style and technology by David Bordwell,
feature control of attentional shifts has inspired Loschky et al. and methods for statistical style analysis by Barry Salt (2009).
(2015) to speak of the 'tyranny of film'. They start from research Low-level features analysed by Cutting and co-workers are
findings suggesting that the use of low-level stylistic features can physically and quantitatively determinable elements or aspects
result in attentional synchrony across film audiences, that is occurring in moving images, regardless of the narrative. They
individual viewers of a scene gaze at exactly the same portions of include shot duration, temporal shot structure, colour, contrast
the screen at exactly the same time.35 Remarkable degrees of and movement. The value of each feature can be expressed as an
inter-viewer synchronization of visual attention has also been index for an entire film, or for some segment targeted in an
established in studies of localisations of brain activity in film analysis.41 Inspection by an analyst complements machine vision
viewers (e.g., Hasson et al., 2003). However, Stephen Hinde’s analyses, but I would qualify the indexing approach as

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Fig. 3 Examples of computational film analyses. Number of shot transitions as a function of acts. Cutting (2016), Fig. 2. Under Creative Commons License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Note that ordinates are inverted; lower positions of titles mean larger number of shots and decreased
shot durations. Normalised time bins refer to units of duration standardised in view of variable film length of separate titles. Left panel displays distribution
of cuts over time and acts, right panel of non-cut transitions such as dissolves, fades and wipes.

computational (objective) film analysis, because of intensive that the analysis winds up in a level of cinematic content
tallying and numerical operations developed by specialists in representation that is grounded in directly given stimulus
psychological data-processing. The features do not constitute features, integrated with film-analytical features that can be
events or scenes, but they accentuate these. A recording of their readily indexed and seem relevant as production tools in regular
measurements for an entire film would constitute an abstract filmmaking.
backbone to be filled with scenes and events. One possible What does computational content analysis mean psychologi-
comparison is with the rhythmic score of a song without melodies cally, that is how do indices and dimensions function in the
and words. In the hands of capable film-makers they are viewer’s perceiving and comprehending events? Patterns of
indispensable for conveying the narrative, due to their direct, features trigger changes in viewers’ physiological, attention,
predictable and automated effects on the visual system. perception and emotion systems, according to Cutting (2016, p.
The primary use of the approach is in film analysis. The multi- 27). Typical low-level configurations may correlate with possible
feature configurations of indices can be used to reliably effects on the viewer’s perception and experience of events. For
'fingerprint' films or sections. Reliably because the indices are example, shot duration may support interpretations of pace,
derived from large numbers of measurements. Computational mood and tension, think of drama’s long takes; temporal shot
film analysis uses a historical corpus of films and has been structure is functional for sustaining attention or suspense (e.g.,
deployed over the past decade to corroborate and enrich when a sequence of brief shots abruptly merges into long duration
historical analyses of film style.42 The climax so far of efforts to shots), e.g., in thrillers; movement (of camera and objects on
integrate computational content analysis with film theory and screen) serves arousal in the viewer, as in action movies; low
analysis is Cutting’s (2016) report on narrative theory and the luminance signals possible threat as in horror movies, while high
dynamics of popular movies. The corpus consisted of 160 English luminance may lend 'a sense of other worldliness' (Brunick et al.,
language films released between 1935 and 2010, ten for each year. 2013, p. 141). All low-level features can help viewers in
As Figure 3 illustrates a typical course obtained of the number of categorising films as to genre, and changes in these will support
shot transitions over film presentation time, interpretable as to segmentation of events and scenes, which is at the basis of smooth
mark the acts and the pace of narration, see Figure 3. An narrative understanding. Combinations of indices enable more
important outcome of the analyses is that clear physical support interesting interpretations of possible experience effects.46 How-
was obtained for the four-act structure proposed by film historian ever, because the studies that the overarching computational
Thompson (1999) across the entire period. It should be noted that content analysis was based on do not involve response
Thompson’s act structure was identified largely on the basis of measurement, a direct connection between cinematic form
higher level narrative segmentation.43 Shot scale was unrelated to (especially narrative procedures) and cinematic meaning that
the act structure. Cutting added analyses of higher order level film Cutting argues for is open to further elaboration. Even in the face
features that can be interpreted to co-vary with narration.44 of the richness of directly given information that has been
Cutting then ventured upon a multi-feature analysis of the entire extracted using computers, Cutting sees room for the use of
corpus. Associations among all indices across all titles could be cognitive schemas. The very narrative acts that are underlined by
reduced to four dimensions: motion, framing, editing and sound. immediately given information may be schematic in nature, but
They correlated in a meaningful way. For example, shot scale was he finds it more likely that their functioning is less dependent on
inversely related to shot duration; in classical narration close-ups memory-processes than the very high-level cognitive structures
tend towards briefer durations than wide shots. Each dimension implied in cognitive scripts and TOM reasoning.
represented polar opposites between features, e.g., music vs. To conclude the sections on the cognition of film scenes, we
conversation for sound and close-ups vs long shots for framing. seem to have made important progress in understanding how
Computational content analysis can explore the dynamics of the movies construct events in film viewers' minds an brains, as put it
dimensional representations over subsequent acts of movies. in his state of the art review. Movies in part "dictate" events,
Figure 4 reproduces Cuttings findings for prolog, setup, actions and scenes to viewers' brains using an "alphabet" of visual
complication, development, climax, and epilog.45 It would seem and auditive features; viewers in turn contribute to the

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Fig. 4 Five movie dimensions in narrational space. Reproduced from Cutting (2016) Fig. 9. under Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/4.0/). The displayed representation is obtained from dimensional reduction of the numerous associations between film titles in terms of
their feature profiles. The results of the first stage of the analysis are not displayed here, see Fig. 8 in Cutting (2016). In that stage, the number of
associations between all titles regarding all features was reduced to four dimensions (see main text) using principal component analysis. In the next stage
the analysis was applied to the features and films for each separate act, to result in the configurations shown here. Arrows vary in length, correspondingly
to differences in the range of values on the dimensions. Black dots indicate median values of the acts on the dimensions. Considering for example the sound
dimension, it can be seen that the set-up tends to have more conversation and the climax has more music. The red bars indicate the dispersion of values on
the dimension and the degree it is skewed towards one or the other end

construction of story-worlds by developing and matching higher- The awareness of narrative film
order structural anticipations using embodied cognitive event, The third part of The Photoplay deals with issues other than the
character and narrative schemas. Since 1916, the film units that psychological mechanisms or the psychology of film form namely
have been analysed increased from paired single stimuli (as the awareness offered by the photoplay. It was only natural to
apparent motion experiments) to whole film acts (as in Münsterberg as a child of his time to designate the special
computational film analysis). Analyses of narrative structure awareness that film creates as the explanandum in psychological
from film theory have become for the psychology of film what research, the mechanisms of film stimuli impinging on attention,
harmonics and counterpoint analysis signify to the psychology of perception and memory being the explanans. His characterisa-
music or the theories of syntax and semantics to psycholinguis- tions of this conscious awareness, what it is like to watch thea-
tics. They inform psychological notions of film structure and trical films, or in other words the phenomenology of the film
organization. experience remains in my view as yet unparalleled. Apart from

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the sense of freedom that we have already discussed, they include narrative, television drama and video-gaming. We discuss four of
attentional and affective experiences. these.
Münsterberg described enjoyment as the immediate effect of a. Narrative engagement (Bussele and Bilandzic, 2008, 2009) is
theatrical film, explaining it from the exceptional freedom of the a pleasant state of being engrossed or entranced by the narrative
imagination: "The massive outer world has lost its weight, it has as a whole as it is presented in a book or film, including the
been freed from space, time, and causality, and it has been clothed activity of reading or viewing it.47 (Tele-)Presence (Schubert et al.,
in the form of our consciousness. The mind has triumphed over 2001; Wirth et al., 2007; and others) refers to the embodied
matter and the pictures roll on with the ease of musical tones. It is awareness of being in a virtual world: being there with your body,
a superb enjoyment which no other art can furnish us" in other words absorption in a story-world.48 The concept has its
(Münsterberg, 1916, p. 95). Light has been thrown on the origin in research into the experience of virtual realities.49
remarkable fluency of the film experience noted by Münsterberg Attempts have been made to ground mechanisms of film-induced
by current research in narrative procedures, and the mechanisms emotion on presence that is the audience’s basic and embodied
of continuity perception discussed in the previous section. awareness of being in the middle of the story-world as a witness
Münsterberg also stressed that the enjoyment of photoplays to events befalling characters Anderson (1996); Tan (1994, 1996).
depends on our experience of the film’s story as an emotionally b. Green and Brock’s (2000) definition of transportation is the
meaningful world separate from reality: 'The photoplay shows us most frequently used conceptualisation of absorption in media-
a significant conflict of human actions … adjusted to the free play psychological research. It is considered a major gratification
of our mental experiences and which reach complete isolation offered to readers of narrative and film viewers alike. It overlaps
from the practical world …' (p. 82). And finally, he singled out with presence in that it features a sense of being in the story-
the role of focused attention in enjoyment. 'It is as if that outer world, as well as a realistic and attentive imagery of details. The
world were woven into our mind and we were shaped not difference may be that as a metaphor transportation evokes
through its own laws but by the acts of our attention, …' associations with transition to or travel into the film’s story-
(Münsterberg, 1916, p. 39). world.50 More than presence, the operationalisations of trans-
Twentieth century academic psychology did not develop much portation entail personal relevance and participatory sympathetic
of a body of theory and research on human consciousness. Hence feeling, amplifying the emotional quality of the experience.
it is not surprising that alongside research into perception and c. Empathy is the common denominator for concepts referring
comprehension one doesn’t find much work on the conscious to absorption in the inner life of fictional characters. Like
experience of film. Measurements of perceptual, attentional, transportation, it is seen as a major gratification in reading stories
cognitive and affective responses in experimental psychology are and watching drama and movies. Viewer empathy has been
extremely limited with regards to the contents of consciousness defined as perceiving, understanding and emotionally responding
that they tap. Lab tasks enabling measurement are must be to character feeling in the seminal work on the subject by
simple, e.g., identification, comparison or categorisation of visual Zillmann (Zillmann, 1991, 1996). Perceived similarity and
stimuli, rather than free description or recall. Self-reports asso- sympathy for the character (grounded in moral attitudes) have
ciated with such tasks must be quantifiable and take the shape of been suggested and tested as determinants of spectator empathy
choice responses, simple intensity ratings or readily codifiable in drama (e.g., Zillmann, 1996; 2000; 2003; 2006).51 There is still a
reports. Behavioural measures are farther removed from any need to sort out possible forms of empathy specific to the
contents of experience because these need to be inferred. Here, canonical conditions of the cinema which may be quite different
too, simple objective coding is a must. Descriptive and inter- from situations in real life where we observe other persons.52
pretative reports of the qualia and meaning of experiences Moreover, empathy with film characters can be less or more
afforded by film have been largely left to hermeneutic film criti- cognitively demanding.53 Identification (e.g., Cohen, 2001) seems
cism and phenomenologically oriented film philosophy in the to stand for complete absorption of the viewer’s self by a
humanities. Scholarship in these fields follows in the footsteps of represented character.54 It can be argued that empathy is the rule
Münsterberg. The present overview of the psychology of the film in film viewing while identification is the exception (e.g.,
cannot go into it further; I refer to Sobchack’s (1992) volume on Zillmann, 1995; Tan, 1996, 2013a, b), as most mainstream film
the phenomenology of the film experience. It opens with the narratives are mainly geared towards provoking the former rather
proposition that film directly expresses perceptions, a proposition than the latter. According to Smith (1995) they use 'alignment'
coming close to the observation in The Photoplay that the con- techniques that promote perspective taking and allegiance
tents of the audience’s experience are perceptions, attention, strategies that foster viewer sympathy for the character while
thinking and emotion that are projected before them on the the distinction between self and character is unaffected.
screen. d. Finally, flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997) is the odd person out
in the series of absorption-like experience concepts reviewed here,
because it applies not only to absorption in movies, narratives or
Absorption in film. Meanwhile, progress can be reported in games, but to any activities that stand out for a certain intensity
understanding one aspect of the rich and complex film experience and intrinsic reward as well. The rather simple idea supporting
namely its intensity. Münsterberg observed that the film audi- the concept is that a pleasurable state is experienced when the
ence’s enjoyment is due to prolonged states of attention strongly challenges inherent in an activity just match the person’s
focused on a fictional story-world, so strong in fact that the here capacities. In the canonical setup of mainstream film (and
and now escapes consciousness and it seems instead as if an 'outer mainstream audiences) this balance is generally realised due to
world were woven into our mind'. Elsewhere we have proposed to filmmakers’ skilful presentation of interesting story-events, and
refer to the experience of intense attention as absorption in a the overlap of it with attentional, perceptual and cognitive
story-world (Tan et al., 2017), following Nell's (1988) ground- routines that film viewers have acquired in the real world.
breaking description of "being lost in a book". Media psycholo- Mainstream movie continuity film style facilitates flow a great
gists specialised in research on media entertainment (Vorderer deal as it tedns to minimize challenges posed by transitions from
et al., 2004, Bilandzic & Bussele, 2011) have developed a variety of one view or perspective to another. Smith's (2012) studies were
measures capturing enjoyable absorption-like states afforded by discussed above as relevant to smooth continuity of visual

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attention, and I would also mention the research on comprehen- witness involves embodied perceptions of what happens in a
sion of events by Schwann (2013; Garsofsky & Schwan, 2009) fictional world, as well as in the imagination constructing and
Obviously, these and other varieties of absorption are not participating in events, without acting on these. In the process,
mutually exclusive. Elsewhere we have presented qualitative events are taken for real for the sake of playful entertainment.
empirical support for a dynamic interplay among the varieties of This position is related to Walton’s (1990) well-known account of
absorption (Bálint and Tan, 2015).55 fiction as make-believe.
From the overview we may conclude that Münsterberg’s Frijda’s cognitive theory of the emotions (Frijda, 1986, 2007) is
introspective psychology of the film experience is in large part the starting point for further explanation of emotional experiences
echoed in the empirical observations gathered one century later. in response to film. The theory posits that the emotion system has
Viewers feel absorbed in another, exceptionally vivid reality, evolved for adaptive action in the first place. For example, the
'clothed in the [embodied] forms of our consciousness' (presence sight of a monster will spawn a strong urge to flee due to a basic
and transportation). Empathy is mentioned by Münsterberg as a concern for safety being jeopardised. Of course, film audiences do
prominent experience, and his notion of an unhampered stream not run out of the auditorium. According to the cognitive theory
of the imagination may correspond with the experience of flow. of emotion, action responses are not fixed responses to emotional
Focused attention is already in The Photoplay a major component stimuli, but the result of appraisals of what they mean for a
of the film experience, that would later be investigated in research person’s concerns in light of the situational context. Playful
on bottom-up vs. top-down attention discussed above. Absorp- simulation provides the contextual frame for the complex
tion, empathy and intensely focused attention can easily appraisal of apparent realism of film events. The appraisal has
substantiate the enjoyability of watching films as Münsterberg three stages: perceptual, imagination based and self-involved.59
already would have it. However, compared to Münsterberg’s 1. Many popular film stimuli provoke immediate and
conceptualisation of the typical film awareness, insights into how automated appraisals of concern relevance and ensuing emotional
acts of imagination on the part of the spectatorcontribute to it responses, due for instance to their nature of unconditioned
have not advanced that much in the psychology of film.56 stimuli in the real world. A snake popping out from the bush
would be an example. Emotional appraisals in the cinema can be
and often are empathetic. That is they include perspectives on
A narrative simulation account of emotion in film viewing. events taken by film characters. Film technology in mainstream
Absorption is an affective state characteristic of the film movies is used to emphasise emotional triggers; editing could
expeirience. However, a description of the typical experience of strengthen the suddenness of the snake’s appearance, and
narrative films is incomplete if more specific affective states are photography could render fear releasers such as the typical
not considered. Watching movies has been identified with emo- movements of the snake more salient.60 But popular films also
tions. We go to the cinema to experience mirth, compassion, present us with emotional stimuli that are immediately perceived
sadness, bittersweet emotions, thrill, horror, and soon in response as fake, for example a rubber prop snake. Due to the playful
to what we see and hear happening to characters and ourselves. simulation frame further cognitive processing of perceptions
Emotions of movie audiences have not received much attention takes place. In the first case, film viewers realise that just
since Münsterberg’s Photoplay. Twenty-first century film psy- perceived events are not real but must be held true for the sake of
chology has taken up where he left off, and a major step forward a playful simulation. In the second, they realise that the fake
has been to regard the narrative structure of films as a funda- stimulus is only a prompt, and comply with its invitation to hold
mental starting point for explaining film viewer emotions. The the stimulus true and allow it to appeal to their concerns, also for
narrative simulation account is, I think, dominant in today’s the sake of playful simulation.
psychological approaches to the issue of why the cinema offers 2. Once imagination takes over from perception, the reality
the intense and remarkable emotional experience that Münster- status of stimuli is traded for believability. As part of the
berg’s photoplays induced a century ago. Important work on imagination fictional events are matched with higher order genre-
emotion in media users has been done in media psychology, most specific narrative schemas, and then dealt with as possibilities in a
on empathy with characters, but narrative induced emotion has particular world. As Frijda (1989) argued when he discussed the
not received much attention, as can be seen from a complete apparent reality of fiction: 'Seeing a fake snake approach a real
overview by Konijn (2013). Cognitive scholars in the humanities person is not scary. But watching an imaginary snake approach an
have highlighted different aspects of film narratives that induce imaginary Jane is. The first is seen as unreal in a real word, and the
perceptions of fictional events associated with intense emotional second as real in an imaginary world. And this is how we appraise
experiences (e.g., genre-typical film style: Grodal, 1997, 2009, events in fiction. The fun of art is in the play with the duality' (p.
2017 ; Visch and Tan, 2009; narrative procedures, e.g., Smith, 1546). Play with the possibility of events in the imagined world
1995; Plantinga, 2009; Berliner, 2017). I hope the reader will allow and entertaining as-if emotions can suffice for genuine emotion to
me to use my own work on the subject as an illustration. It is arise. As I argued elsewhere (Tan, 1996) the appraisal of the
closely related to the cognitive - theoretical analyses just referred possibility of events in a particular fictional world can and usually
to. I have found a cognitive approach to emotion in general does lead to genuine emotion, because humans have been
psychology fruitful for narrative modelling of emotion in film equipped with a capacity to have emotions in response to mental
viewing.57 Investigations of film-induced emotion have raisedthe representations of counterfactual and imaginary events. 61
issue of apparent realism: how can a clearly fictional world be 3. The genuine emotion can—but does not need to—open up
taken for real to the effect of intensely moving emoting viewers? considerations of the believability of fictional events in the real
Oatley introduced a cognitive theory of narrative fiction as world. Moreover, it can lead to imaginations in which the viewer’s
simulation (1999, 2012, 2013) that applies to film as a stimulus for self is involved in the events or their ramifications. The appraisal
possibly complex emotions. Narrative runs simulations on the of fictional film events is treated in more detail in Tan and Visch
embodied mind just as programs run simulations on compu- (2018). The search for film style and technology features that are
ters.58 I would add that filmviewers take part in a playful simu- conducive to particular emotional appraisals has only slowly lifted
lation in which the film leads them to imagine they are present in off. Cutting's computational content analyses were already
a fictional world, where they witness fictional events that film mentioned There are scattered empirical studies e.g. of camera
characters are involved in (Tan, 1995, 1996, 2008). Being a angle and editing pace by Kraft (1987) and Lang et al. 1995,

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respectively. Film technique manuals and critical anayles provide the cinema we do not only want to know but also to see and hear.
abundant intuitively convincing examples of how to produce The enjoyment of seeing a couple kiss or a heroine return after an
emotionally appealing sequences. It is to be expected that odyssee of some sort is in the cinema incomplete when it is not
computational film analysis will soon enable large scale studies shown. In the cinematic appraisal of interest, an anticipation of
of the use of style and technology in emoting scenes. embodied completion of our narrative-led imagination is a major
Back to emotion and action. As film viewers perceive film ingredient of the promise of reward.
scenes to be projections on screen of a fictional world, they
understand they cannot act, and their action tendencies are Emotional responses to fiction film worlds. The second concern
suppressed.62 As importantly, one’s inability to act upon a that movies touch upon is sympathy. That this concern is active
fictional world is a strong trigger for emotional responses throughout the reception of all traditional movies answers the
involving the imagination of action. Driven by sympathy, viewers question why film viewers care about damsels, hobbits or gorilla’s
desire that protagonists escape from a horrific situation. In their in distress. There is a fundamental human need for bonding with
imagination they anticipate and hope that the protagonist is saved others and recognising whatever fictional character as someone
by someone or something and if need be by a fictional miracle.63 'like us' supposedly suffices for sympathy to arise.67 Mainstream
Thus, they experience or exhibit a virtual form of action readiness films activate the concern to the full as their sympathetic prota-
(Frijda, 1986).64 This readiness for action can be directly observed gonists meet with ups and downs in on the way to their goals.
in film viewers from their "participatory responses" (Bezdek, Foy Sympathy-based emotions like disappointment, regret, awe, mirth,
& Gerrig, 2013) - such as overt expressions of sympathy for a suspense, hopes and fears, compassion and sadness occur in
character (see also Tan, 2013b). However, there is one thing that response to obstacles or their removal on the way to protagonists
film-viewers as witnesses invariably do when properly emoted: realising their projects.68 Because these emotions arise in response
eagerly watch the events on screen. to events (appraised as desirable or undesirable) in a fictional
Following cognitive film theory further, I consider the world, we refer to these emotions as responding emotions.69 Some
emotional experience of film as the sum total of experience of frequently experienced sympathetic responding emotions such as
the appraisal, internal and external bodily expressions and fear, sadness, compassion and being moved, can be empathetic,
changes in action readiness integrated in consciousness in that is require mentalising a character’s inner life. Said more
accompanying the sensory intake of units of film. precisely, empathetic emotion requires that the viewer’s appraisal
of any fictional events reflects the perspective of a character; the
Film, interest and enjoyment. An account of `film - audience event is understood from a character’s imagined point of view
emotion is incomplete if it does not go into the question why we and with her concerns, and feelings. In its most intense forms,
actually take the trouble of watching movies. Münsterberg already sympathy can look and feel like self-indulgent sentiment. How-
wondered how mature people can become so emotionally ever, there is no point in condemning tears of sadness or joy as
absorbed in fantasy worlds. Narrative films can be argued to silly. The term sentiment is not necessarily pejorative. The
address two basic emotional concerns in particular, curiosity and appraisal of a character’s suffering or good doing can involve an
sympathy (Tan, 1996). All sorts of narrative fiction, including film acknowledgment of its superior measure, notably in relation to
provoke interest by presenting events with uncertain con- the self’s suffering or good doing. In my compassion with or
sequences. Thus, they address a basic curiosity, that is a need for admiration for a beloved character I can feel that her fate is really
novelty, knowing and exploration. Interest is the emotion that woeful compared to mine, or that her altruistic achievements
responds to appeals involving this concern. Interest in film make mine totally insignificant. Being moved, awe and having
viewing does have a real action readiness to it referred to above: goose bumps are emotional responses accompanying such
watch eagerly. Because the response in interest includes spending appraisals (Tan and Frijda, 1997; Tan, 2009; Wassiliwizky et al.,
and focussing attention to specific story-world events, its 2017; Schubert et al., 2018) 70
experience goes hand in hand with absorption. Mainstream film’s However, not every responding emotion requires empathy or
narrative is perfectly designed to support a characteristic sys- sympathy.71 The sympathy concern does not only drive our
tematic unfolding of interest as an emotion. Movies continuously siding with characters and responding emotionally to the ups and
present cognitive challenges that viewers know they can meet.65 downs in their projects. As I proposed (Tan, 1996) it can make us
Silvia (2006) has shown in a greater number of studies that this is invest affectively 'film-long' in characters, on top of going along in
the condition for optimal interest. I have referred to the core their hopes and fears, successes and failures. We are also
appraisal of narrative interest as promise of rewarding outcomes, witnesses of characters’ slower and more profound development
in terms either of desirability for a protagonist or mankind in into personae we would want them to be. The share of action or
general, or of coherence, completeness or elegance of a narrative’s plot development relative to that of character differs from one
structure, or both (Tan, 1996). In addition, the prospect of sought genre to another.72 Generally, action movies and especially
emotions, such as excitement, enjoyment and appreciation is as comedies tend to allow for only minimal character development,
well part of the promise that ongoing film narratives constantly whereas the drama genres may indulge into it. In these genres,
offer.66 Interest is closely linked with enjoyment, the primary viewer interest may depend in larger part on characterisation and
gratification that movies offer their audience. In the cinema character development.
interetst is pleasant because it is fun to entertain anticipations of Another class of emotions responding to the fictional world are
as yet uncertain story-outcomes. Moreover, every outcome, even 'spectacular' that is spectacle based. The spectacle of landscapes,
if it is unanticipated or unfavorable, is greeted with enjoyment buildings, natural objects and artifices, human or animal figures
because it answers one's curiosity. (In the case of sad, horrific or in motion, can surprise us and touch on a sense of beauty and
otherwise hedonically negative or mixed outcomes, "enjoyment" invoke appraisals of harmony, elegance, or serenity. In some
is not the proper label for the rewarding emotion. We return to genres the spectacle of explosions, injury, cruelty disfiguration,
the fun of unpleasant emotion in a later section).On a final note, etc. may incite disgust, fear raise emotions. Spectacle-based
interest in film viewing is a case of narrative interest as a broader emotions do not rely on empathy of any depth, their stimulus
category of emotions, but the sensory qualities of the medium are being the mere view or sound of a fictional scene; they are neither
relevant for how interest feels. Curiosity to know is in part a dependent on sympathy. In more traditional terms, image and
desire for the closure of a propositional narrative structure, but in sound combinations of objects, events, and figures in the fictional

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admiration due to an appraisal of the protagonist’s sense of self-

determination. Both measures determined the level of interest
measured continuously using a seven-point slider device (Tan
and van den Boom, 1992). Affect structures can be more or less
generic. That is, responding emotions are just like the plots,
characters, and events that prompt these, characteristic for a
certain genre. The study of genre-based emotion has been con-
centrated in research of undesirable effects of watching violence,
sensation or horror in entertainment fare, see e.g. a volume edited
by Bryant and Vorderer (2006). Psychological research into the
role of viewer genre knowledge is on its way (e.g. Tan & Visch,
2009).

The appeal of unpleasant emotions. A brief glance at the success

rates of films featuring sad, violent or horrific content illustrates
the appeal that unpleasant emotions can have to audiences at
large. Münsterberg already objected to vicious effects of violent
Fig. 5 Continuous interest over the course of In for treatment; N = 21; from and repulsive imagery in 1910s photoplays, contents that he
Tan and Van den Boom (1992). Interest was registered every second using observed to be worryingly attractive. The psychology of the film
a slider rating device. Measurement was validated by self-report interest holds various explanations in stock, but none as yet chosen. The
ratings. Numbers under the abscissa represent subsequent scenes. 1–6: best documented proposal is Menninghaus et al.’s distancing-
prolog; 7–18: complication, 19–20 development; 24: climax followed by embracing model that stipulates two complmentary mechanisms.
epilog. One rids painful, disgusting or otherwise unpleasant aesthetic
stimuli from an impact that would prevent any enjoyment or
appreciation of the stimulus. The other allows for experiences
that are 'intense, more interesting, more emotionally moving,
world can be emotionally appraised as spectacular, beautiful, more profound, and occasionally even more beautiful' (Mennin-
sublime, horrific, bizarre, absurd and so on. Amazement, ghaus et al., 2017, p. 1). The model is meant to explain the pre-
enjoyment, awe (the wow-feeling), entrainment, being moved valence of negative emotion in all art forms, and harbours a great
and aesthetic appreciation are apt labels for ensuing emotions. many classical approaches to the issue. Media psychologists have
Like all emotional responses to fiction worlds, spectacle-based proposed what I think are regulation accounts of the pleasures of
emotions can also arise when we read narratives, but in the negative emotion. An emotion such as horror results from
cinema, they compete conspicuously with plot and character- appraisal of monsters etc. as threatening and repulsive, but the
driven interest and sympathy-based affective response. It seems emotion itself, too, can be subject to appraisal. Likewise, your
like the viewer’s witness role is temporarily swapped for a crying in the cinema may induce embarrassment upon your
spectator role.73 The viewer can identify even further with realising that it is only a film you are watching.75 Serious drama,
patterns of motion or sequences of image and sound that lack the contents of which can be appraised as poignant or thought-
reference to the film’s story-world. Viewers may contemplate provoking (Oliver and Hartmann, 2010), and more in particular
lyrical associations of visuals, sounds, music and symbolic independent arthouse titles that tend to provoke appreciation and
concepts in embodied consciousness as Grodal (1997) proposed. elevation rather than enjoyment seem to compensate the most
If story action imaginations give rise to emotions, lyrical painful experiences they offer by a high instruction or (self-)
associations are responded to with moods, e.g., nostalgic, tense reflection potential (Oliver & Bartsch, 2013). They offer con-
or relaxed ones. The seemingly immediate representations on tinuous promises of broadening insights or revising one’s views of
screen of emotions through camera movements and associative the world and the self, possibly only materialising to the full long
editing editing that Münsterberg described would be examples. after the show. In my own work I have pointed at the modulating
effects of genre schemas (Tan & Visch, 2017) and narrative
Emotion structure of narrative film. As a way to profile the interest on negative emotions.76
dynamics of emotion across an entire film I proposed to represent In closing the sections on film-induced emotion we need to
these in a succinct model, the affect structure of a film (Tan, note that the account of the cognitive appraisal of emoting events
1996). The model represents the course of interest and of given here is simplified. Even straightforward film narratives can
responding emotions in time as predicted by theevents as they are have complexities in terms, e.g., of plot lines, or character and
subsequently presented by the film.74 Generalising across titles, a narrator perspective that affect the intricacies of emotional events.
most general hypothesis is that the level of interest during I refer readers to Oatley’s (2012; 2013) discussion of in this sense
mainstream movies tends to rise globally. This is because on the more sophisticated appraisals of fictional events. More generally,
way to protagonists’ goals, stakes tend to go up every novel film psychological research is needed into the use of more
complication. This will lead to increasing promise of reward complex TOM heuristics in the comprehension of film narrative,
roughly between the prologue and climax acts. Locally though, and in emotional appraisals of film events.
interest peaks and dips alternate over subsequent scenes, The conclusion on the psychology of film awareness must be, I
depending on genre and particular film. Figure 5 displays an think, that the gripping nature of the film experience is as
example course of interest measured in viewers of the film In for astonishing today as it was to early film audiences. Media
treatment. In this study of emotions induced by a tragic drama on psychologists have started to measure it, and cognitive film
a terminally ill hospital patient, we found that an initial appraisal scholars have forwarded theoretical frameworks for an account of
of the protagonist as increasingly suffering under the yoke of an film viewer affect and emotion. But the phenomenology of film
oppressive hospital regime, was associated with a responding has not been expanded by film psychologists beyond the
emotion of compassion. After the complication act, the prota- descriptions of what it is like to watch a movie provided in The
gonist’s acts of resistance against the hospital’s regime gave way to Photoplay.

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The psychology of film as art be called a surge. Two film-psychological books, Art Shimamura’s
Whether or not the awareness of film entails appreciations of Psychocinematics (2013) and Jeffrey Zacks’ Flicker: Your brain on
artistry can only be a rhetorical question, but the psychology of movies (2014), have recently filled the void left after The
the film has not explicitly addressed the subject. After Münster- Photoplay.
berg and Arnheim hardly any psychologist considered film as an The review of psychological studies into the film experience
art form at all. And neither have general psychological aesthetics presented in this contribution is highly selective. It was not meant
taken film into consideration. The psychology of narrative film as at all to cover the entire field, if only because we selected
it developed since the 1990’s has addressed the aesthetics of achievements from the vast research area of moving images and
movies, but rather implicitly. We have discussed psychologists’ their perception. This is why the essay is titled 'A psychology of
efforts to explain the natural fluency in the perception of story- the film' rather than 'The etc.'. Granted its basic limitations, an
events that Münsterberg already found characteristic for the film overview of a century of film psychology could conclude with a
experience. They pointed at the conventional use of continuity comparison with research agenda that was set in Münsterberg’s
film style. Mainstream cinema’s narration has been demonstrated Photoplay. The typical gripping experience that mainstream
by cognitive film theorists to be at best marginally self-conscious movies offer the audience has now come to be characterised as a
(Bordwell, 1985, 2006). That is formal features of a film’s com- sense of being absorbed by and quasi-physically present in a film
position, style and use of technology are non-salient and sub- scene that feels like going on as smoothly and continuously as a
servient to the viewer’s reconstruction of and absorption in a scene in real life. Considerable progress has been made in
fabula. The viewer’s construction of a story-world is only dis- understanding how the basic psychological functions attention,
cretely cued by the narration, and formal or stylistic patterns that perception and memory contribute to viewers’ comprehension of
do the job tend to escape consciousness to a more than con- film. An understanding has developed of how attentional, per-
siderable degree (see Tan et al., 2017). We could say, I believe, ceptual and cognitive mechanisms dovetail with the solutions and
that the psychological aesthetics of popular film is as it stands, norms of traditional cinemascopy. In the conventional 35 mm
first and foremost about absorption, the intense and fluent ima- theatre set-up, the dark environment where high-density pro-
gination of being in a fictional world. And it should be added that jections extend over the limits of the foveal acuity field, screens
a psychological aesthetics of forms other than popular narrative are big enough to allow for sufficient stimulation of the peripheral
fiction film is missing. Available knowledge suffices to propose a motion-sensitive visual field and the spinning projector shutter
psychology of the thriller, the romance drama or the coming-of makes for smooth stroboscopic movement. Moreover, the visual
age film, but not for a psychology of the documentary, the system is quite resistant against perspective transformations due
expressionist, the surrealist or the postmodern film, let alone of to less optimal viewing points, probably through extracting
experimental, avant-garde and other museum film art forms. invariants under transformation (Cutting, 1986). Mainstream
After all then, at present we are not far removed from Mün- narrative continuity film-style ensures a fluent perception and
sterberg’s speculation on the aesthetic experience of theatrical comprehension of a film’s story-world, action, characters and
film as intense absorption due to the inner harmony of a film’s their inner lives. Emotional responses can be explained from the
parts and conditional on only modest deviations from realistic development of the story and the progress of protagonists’
photo-representations of the worlds that it plays. projects.
However, as we write, everything seems set to embark on And yet, a lot less effort has been spent in theoretically ela-
research in the film audience’s aesthetic appraisals of movies. We borating further on what the film experience is. There is a general
can rest assured that at present 'the inner parts' of mainstream disbelief that it would involve a mere recognition of events,
film in terms of contents, style and technology have been well- situations, persons etc. as we know them in the real world. But
described by film theorists such as those referred to above. They what exactly the spectator’s imagination contributes to the typical
can help psychologists teaming up with computer vision and awareness of the film is still mysterious. And how filmic events,
hearing specialists to develop computational analyses of 'the inner and the ways they have been staged, acted, framed, photographed
harmony between the parts'. As a favourable sign of the times we and edited exactly influence and prompt acts of imagination on
also note a growing interest in the implicit knowledge that the the part of audiences, has only in part been understood.
regular film audience has of patterned uses of film style and Meanwhile, the supply of "photoplays" has immensely multi-
technology in various forms and genres (see, e.g., Visch and Tan, plied and diversified since 1916, but the mainstream narrative
2009). Moreover, the first attempts have been made to identify the film has by far remained the most popular form. Today’s ubi-
psychological dimensions that underlie film audience aesthetic quitous access to moving images through a multiplicity of screens
tastes.77 Dimensions of what I called the Artefact emotions, that is has made it more urgent than ever for psychologists to under-
the affective evaluations of films as aesthetic products will soon be stand the experiences associated with extremely different cine-
identifiable from reviews by critics and the film audience at large matic devices. They range from handheld phones to giant 3-D
that are already available in large data repositories.78 Large scale multiplex screens and surround installations in museums.
highly data-intensive research can be accompanied by smaller Canonical set-ups of the cinema also tend to diverge because of
scale laboratory studies of whether and how viewers attend to networked interaction technologies seeking application in the
aesthetically relevant patterns of formal and stylistic features.79 production, distribution and exhibition of motion pictures. Psy-
chologists of the film can use their current understanding of how
audiences experience mainstream cinema as a basis for differ-
Concluding remarks entiating what film semiologists call 'dispositives': clusters of
The agenda that Hugo Munsterberg set for the psychology of the production, exhibition and reception practices characterised by
film, explaining the film experience through revealing psycholo- specific expectations, attitudes and competences of their end
gical mechanisms underlying it, and accounting for its aesthetic users.80
functions is after a century still leading. I believe that psycholo- The psychology of film is rapidly developing into an inter-
gists of film have over the century not added new questions, while disciplinary field. Münsterberg’s psychological study already
the ones he posed have been shown to be complex or even reflected inspiration from fields far removed from experimental
resilient. Nonetheless the field has gradually expanded. After the psychology such as the then conventional practice of the photo-
1970's growth accelerated and today we face what in modesty may play as well as from Aristotelian poetics of the theatre play. In the

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same vein, current psychologists of film as we have seen, improve physically apart. Münsterberg’s view of the emotions showed similarities with James’
their understanding of the perception and cognition of film in a theory on the subject, as it stressed their embodied character; emotions cannot do
without behavioural and physiological expressions. Münsterberg proposed that
collaboration with experts in the analysis of narration in the emotions that film audiences experience are portrayed on screen. The viewer’s
fiction film. Advances in current models of film viewer attention imagination transforms what they see into their own felt emotion: The 'horror, pain
featuring narrative cuing are profoundly informed by (historical) and the joy' that spectators go through are 'really projected to the screen' (p. 53). In
film analyses.81 Scholars in cognitive film studies, such as those addition, he introduced a distinction between what we would refer to today as
collaborating within the Society for the Cognitive Study of the emotions based on empathy with characters on the one hand, and on the other
Moving Image are steadily producing in-depth analyses of film at emotions responding to the scenes they are in.
2 Münsterberg’s observation of how film expresses the basic psychological functions
work conjointly with the viewer’s mind.82 The same goes for the has been compellingly argued by Baranowski and Hecht’s (2017) in their excellent
(more modest) advances made in psychological models of film- review of Münsterberg’s Photoplay.
produced emotion. Further collaborations with specialists in 3 Even if what we call today automated responses do have a place in the psychological
machine-analysis of image and sound can be expected to add to functions, perception, attention, and memory are according to Münsterberg in the
an objective identification of formal and stylistic film structures, end acts of the mind, and imagination is even more so.
also beyond the domain of traditional mainstream film, 'in the 4 The aesthetic experience is grounded in a Kantian conception emphasising the
completeness of the work of art in itself, and an explicit denial of the contemplant’s
wild' of cyberspace, and in experimental art cinemas. desires or practical needs in it.
The technology of measuring psychological responses to film 5 This in turn requires that we 'enter with our own impulses into the will of every
structures (perception, attention, memory and affect) has also element, into the meaning of every line and colour and tone. Only if everything is full
developed tremendously since Münsterberg founded the percep- of such inner movement can we really enjoy the harmonious cooperation of the parts'
tion lab at Harvard. Gaze tracking, fMRI and TMS have been (p. 73).
added to the psychophysical and cognitive response registrations. 6 This probably not in the least due to the stability of the experimental and social have
been on the agenda of the psychology of film ever since. The functions and
Integration of large scale image analysis data with behavioural mechanisms of the mind that experimental research focuses on have globally
measures obtained in the lab or as 'big data' is the next step in the remained the same, and the interest in aesthetics has not waned.
development of film psychology. The study of integral responses 7 Constancies in visual perception are disrupted due to the optical and mechanic
to units of film extending beyond a few seconds entailing entire qualities of film. Examples in point include reduced depth, absence of colour, object
actions, events, scenes and acts, or even films as a whole, requires shape and volume distortions due to insufficient information on object size or
new response recording devices and data models. Perhaps it will camera’s distance.
8 A famous example is the ballet sequence in René Clair’s Entr’Act (1924). Filmed
be feasible within a decade or so to append large emotional through a glass plate on which the dancers move, they are seen from a most unusual
response datasets obtained from social media and filmdatabase angle, at least compared to the canonical views that theatre audiences have, i.e., from
metadata to computational content analyses described above. We below, and from an as unusual distance, i.e., from nearby. So close indeed that their
will then be able to categorise films into meaningful clusters, e.g., robes fill the entire frame, and the spectator is struck by their expanding contours in
genres and subgenres based on relations between themes, plots, the 2D plane of the screen.
film style and emotion profiles. Small scale lab experiments can 9 To be sure, his treatment of the perception of movement, dynamics and expression in
works of all arts, seem to be modelled after the organisational principles the mind
tell us more about what exactly the mind adds to the image on uses in shaping the film experience.
screen and the sound from cinema loudspeakers remains. Let me 10 Cutting has often convincingly argued that stroboscopic motion is a better label than
single out as the leading issue the question how bottom-up and apparent motion. His definition is 'a series of discrete static images can sometimes
top-down mechanisms interact in producing the film experi- render the impression of motion'(Cutting, 2002, p. 1179)
ence.83 Diversification of the set-up of in-depth studies is also 11 Why and how we see motion has been as basic to the study of visual perception as
necessary following the multitude of conventional set-ups of film questions of perception of colour, depth, and shape. Helmholtz proposed that what
we need to explain is how retinal images that correspond one-to one, i.e., optically
viewing on various screens and in on-line or 'live'(?) exhibitions. with a scene in the world are transformed into mental images, or percepts that we
And just as in 1916, a select but growing minority of experience. In the case of apparent motion, we need to understand in addition how a
researchers in academic, empirical psychology want to under- succession of retinal images are perceived as one or more objects in motion.
stand why and how it is we perceive and what it is like to enjoy 12 By smooth is meant that no transitions or flicker are seen, and no blurring of
movies. They want an understanding because first they are superposed images occurs. The problem of apparent motion in film has been
movie-loving psychologists and second they find film a challen- formulated in this way by the Dutch perception psychologist and filmmaker Emile
van Moerkerken in an unpublished chapter written in 1978. The issue of why and
ging testing ground for fundamental models of attention, per- when flickering instead of smoothly projected images are seen has been technically
ception, memory, imagination, emotion and aesthetics. resolved through trial and error. Cinematic projectors need to present at least 24
frames per second if flicker is to be avoided, and higher frequencies, for instance 72
Received: 10 October 2017 Accepted: 12 April 2018 fps are even better (e.g., Anderson, 1996, pp. 54–59). These frequencies are above the
human perception system’s critical fusion frequency, at least for the conventional
luminance ranges in cinematic projection.
13 In the late nineteen sixties the organisation of the cortical cell complexes for visual
perception in layered columns were identified by neurophysiologists Hubel and
Wiesel (1959). Cells in Brodman areas 17 and 18 were found sensitive to different
Notes aspects of motion (e.g., orientation and spatial vs. temporal resolution), while
1 A more detailed discussion of the functions in photoplay viewing can be summarised integration into forerunners of motion perception is assumed to take place in areas
thus: As regards the perception of film scenes, Münsterberg argued that in the cinema V4 and MT.
depth is seen without spectator’s taking it for real, that movement is perceived not 14 Luminance and colour identification have been shown to interact with the more
without the spectator’s mind adding the quality of smooth motion to merely seeing a motion dedicated complexes in delivering impressions of motion, while the
succession of positions. For example, apparent movement of in fact stationary lines is phenomenon of perceiving depth from movement has been very well documented.
'… superadded by the action of the mind, to motionless pictures' (1916, p. 29). 15 For example, form-invariant apparent motion—that seems to require somewhat less
Attention in the cinema concentrates the mind on details that acquire an unusual elementary integration has been shown attributable to specialised MT cells for slower
vividness and become the focus of our impulses and feelings. Close-ups objectify this and faster motion (O’Keefe and Movshon, 1998). And as another example, Anstis
weaving 'of the outer world into our minds' (p. 39). Attention is characterised by a (1980) discovered a system based on comparison of subsequent locations for
series of subsequent shifts in its object. Shifts are provided by scene or action details apparent horizontal motion of a single dot, and another one for the perception of
made salient by spatial mise-en-scène, notably actor expression (movement and wave-form motion of an array of dots.
gestures), and mobile framing. Memory is used at any moment to remember events 16 For example, it has been reported that test participants accurately perceive velocity of
presented earlier in the film. Just as attention and perception are an instrument of the motion of a grating pattern only when they pay attention to its details (Cavanagh,
imagination, memory enables the fusing of events in our consciousness that are 1992).

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17 As another example, tension in a static work of art is perceived due to the brain’s through literary analysis. Here he was probably referring to cases in artistically
synthesis of forces from implied movements, such as outward-directed tensions highest end productions.
perceived in symmetrical geometric shapes. These can be observed in 'gamma 29 For example, Hayhne (2007) criticised Hochberg’s stipulation that mental schemas
movement', Arnheim, 1974, p. 438. used in understanding shot transitions cannot be spatially precise or complete. She
18 The presentation times are short (flashes), say two-hundred milliseconds. The objects quoted evidence of the use of self-produced body movements following a mental map
differ between the two presentations only in spatial position, we refer to these as A1 with extreme precision.
for object A in position 1, and A2. Depending on the interval between presentations 30 According to one such theory (the so-called Event Indexing Model, Magliano, Miller
apparent motion can be seen. With a briefest interval simultaneity of objects A1 and & Zwaan, 2001) viewers of film like readers of stories generate embodied cognitive
A2 is seen; less brief (appr. 100 Ms) makes us see 'pure motion'; that is 'objectless models of (story-) situations. These mental models represent sequences of events,
movement'; with still briefer intervals (appr. 60 Ms) we see 'optimal movement' of the people and their goals, plans and actions, in spatiotemporal settings. The situation
object A1 to A2; and with briefest interval partial movement. model is continuously updated while the film proceeds. Updates follow upon the
19 Wertheimer believed that perceived motion patterns reflected a short-circuiting identification of changes in story-entities (e.g., movement of characters or objects),
between cells in the brain that were successively stimulated. time, causality and intentionality.
20 For example, among Korte’s laws, proposed in 1915, was a rule stating that the ratio 31 This synthetic response by the viewer can be taken as the actual recognition and
of spatial distance between shapes and the interval between successive presentations categorisation of an event or action. Neuroscience research has identified areas of the
was constant for the perception of 'good motion', clearly a Gestalt-like pattern. This brain involved in recognising—and 'simulating' actions such as grasping an object, or
coupling of the two features obtained in controlled studies, is surprising until today exhibiting a facial expression, e.g., Hasson et al. (2004).
because purely mechanistic intuition would have it that increases in spatial distance 32 As an example study, Garsoffky et al. (2009) demonstrated that the recognition of
would need 'compensation' by briefer inter-stimulus intervals to preserve smooth events by film viewers improved when framing objects or events across shots adheres
apparent motion. A related discovery, reported by Kolers (1972, p. 39 also militates to viewpoints that are common in real world perception. Other studies tested the
against light-hearted use of an analogy with mechanics: Decreasing the spatial notion that movies adhering to this style present viewers with simplified event views
distance between successively presented shapes does not necessarily result in better that they can readily integrate in an available event schema (e.g., Schwan, 2013).
movement. 33 The cueing of attentional shifts to the target portion of screen B can assume distinct
21 First, the physiological account resting on 'prewired' neurocircuitry cannot do forms, such as through match on action, establishing and shot/ reverse shots, and
without integrative operations at a higher level of mental processing involving point shot. The attentional shift has carried the conscious experience across the
integration across separate cortical modules. Even if such operations are prewired, discontinuity in views. The theory is documented by numerous analyses of scene
they represent contributions of the mind. Second, as importantly, the impact of visual perception, in which analysed shot contents are overlaid with dynamic gaze maps.
stimulus features has on the perception of movement, and especially more complex The model can explain how violations of continuity principles result in less efficient
forms, have been shown sensitive to control by the will within certain bounds. Third, gaze behaviours. Artistically motivated violations are taken seriously, but dealt with as
figural processes in apparent motion appear to be extremely plastic, defying atypical for the canonical set-up.
explanations by stimulus factors, as the example of induced motion illustrates. 34 Bezdek et al. (2015) report a study in which participants were shown a film scene at
22 As an illustration, even a somewhat forgotten proposal by Van der Waals and Roelofs the centre of fixation while checkerboard patterns were flashed in the periphery of
(1930) according to Kolers, seems to go. They proposed that in apparent motion, the vision. The results of fMRI analyses showed that activity of peripheral visual
intervening motion is constructively interspersed in retrospect that is, only after the processing areas in the brain was diminished with increasing narrative suspense of
second presentation of the Koler object. And after Kolers' volume on apprent motion, the scenes, whereas activity in areas associated with central vision, attention and
several proposals have been forwarded on possible mechanisms. For example Kubovy dynamic visual processing increased.
and Gepshtein (2007) demonstrated in two experiments that spatial and temporal 35 In one experiment, viewers were presented with a sequence from Moonraker in which
distances act either in trade-off or coupled to one another to provide for smooth James Bond jumps out of a plane and can be expected to fall 'safely' onto a circus tent.
apparent motion; the one at low speeds and the other at high speeds. None of the This high-level event schema-based cognitive expectation was enhanced in one
proposals have been accepted as the final solution, also because different definitions condition but not in another, through providing a written context before the
of the factors or the criterion for motion have been used. sequence was shown. It turned out that providing context knowledge led to the
23 Michotte (1946) attempted with some success to capture configurations of moving critical inference and to less surprise, pointing at the functionality of high-level
objects that would be perceived as instances of causation, a mentally represented attention cues. However, gaze behaviour did hardly differ between the high-level cued
concept. For example, block A is seen to 'push' block B forward if A approaches B vs. non-cued viewers. Moreover, effects predicted from a tyranny of film analysis of
(that is standing still) with an appropriate speed, and contact time. Alternatively, B the sequence—that is where viewers looked and what, were much stronger than the
will be perceived to 'depart' if some time in contact has elapsed before B moves away subtle effects of high-level cognitive processes.
from A. In fact, Michotte’s experimental phenomenology was influenced by Brentano 36 The computation of visual salience can easily be extended to the case of film by
who was a major inspiration to the early Gestalt psychologists as well. Another great replacing the input image by a series of frames and the output by an array of saliency
contribution by Michotte to the psychology of the film was that he was one of the first maps. Furthermore, low-level features such as colour and orientation need to be
to analyse the problem of the apparent reality of cinematic scenes that Münsterberg integrated over successive images into dynamic ones, e.g., changes in orientation, and
and Arnheim had signalled. His diagnosis was that we see non-real objects, that is into motion features.
shapes projected on the screen. However, we do perceive—physiologically—real 37 See: http://bitsearch.blogspot.nl/2013/05/saliency-maps-and-their-computation.
movement of these, and this is a condition presumed to be decisive for perceiving html#!/2013/05/saliency-maps-and-their-computation.html (accessed 31 Jan 2018).
reality. Heider and Simmel are known for their demonstration of the inevitability of 38 For example, an international group from the universities of Brescia and Teesside has
event, person and story-based schema-based inferences that viewers of simple recently shown able to predicts movie affect curves that is, dynamic patterns of
animated geometric figures tend to make (Heider and Simmel, 1944). emotional responses, from low-level features such as colour, motion and sound, while
24 Note that objects are not part of an optic array, as the latter refers to the metrical taking into account the influence of film grammar (e.g., sequences of varying shot-
organisation of patterns of light. types) and narrative elements (e.g., script or dialogue analysis classifications). The
25 There are certainly limits to the likeness of the dynamical optical flow offered by film analysis of the grammatical and narrative features can be supported by the computer
images to real world ones. First, the flow is interrupted by cuts, and second the but are not entirely machine-executably algorithmic. The emotional responses were
projected image in the cinema constrains the optic flow in a variety of ways. (Thanks measured using physiological and self-report measures (Canini et al., 2010).
to one the anonymous reviewers). 39 In his earlier widely acclaimed work in general visual perception, Cutting continued
26 The discussion of Hochberg and Brooks’ psychology of the film is based on an earlier the Gibsonian ecological approach to the perception of real world scenes, attempting
essay (Tan, 2007). to find formal extraction and coding principles sustaining the direct pick-up of
27 Hochberg and Brooks (1996a) provided wonderful examples of the intricate behaviourally relvant information. See, e.g., Cutting (1981), in which ecological tenets
aesthetics of camera movement when filming a human figure in motion, examples regarding the perception of events based on invariant structures in the information
that require frequent analyses of filmed dance, or to film dance oneself, as Brooks has offer of the visual stimulus. This line of research also included cinematic perception.
done indeed. Movement may be seen where there is actually none, apparent reversals An example is his study on the perception of rigid shapes when viewers are seated at
of direction or apparent stasis may all occur, even in parallel. Hochberg and Brooks extreme angles vis-à-vis the centre of projection, e.g., front row side aisle (Cutting,
(1996b) demonstrated that complex movements need to be ‘parsed’ by viewers into 1987).
components depending on factors such as fixation point and even viewer intentions. 40 In the essay Cutting lists the cues in the optical array that sustain the perception of
Direct realist explanation of the film awareness would soon stumble on degrees of distance in the real world, and then elaborates on how filmmakers manipulate depth
stimulus complexity too high to capture in optical array invariants; input from other cues in order for the audience to perceive scenes exactly the way the narrative
cognitive structure-based mechanisms capable of selecting candidates for 'pick-up' requires them to.
would be necessary. 41 Following the convenient overview in Brunick et al. (2013) they are for duration
28 Hochberg (1986) stated that in some cases only the most complex cognitive efforts average shot duration in seconds; for temporal shot structure the distribution of shot
could explain an understanding of shot transitions, that could only be conveyed durations; for movement the degree of difference between pixels in adjacent frames

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(zero when frames are identical means no movement); for luminance the degree of occur when the film’s narration withholds information about a character’s inner life
black vs white of images; and for colour the distribution of hues and degrees of in relation to story-events as in some arthouse films (Tan, 2013a, b). Mentalizing has
saturation of frames. like cognitively less demanding forms of empathy been shown to be affected by film
42 For example, in the analyses just mentioned Cutting et al. established in their style. Rooney and Bálint (2018) recently demonstrated that close-ups of the face
Hollywood sample an increase of movement between 1905 and 1935 and could relate stimulate the use of TOM in the perception of characters.
this finding to film-analytic accounts of stylistic changes supporting growing 54 Identification has been empirically observed and isolated from other forms of
emotional impact of movies. As another example, consider the well-documented absorption by Cohen (2001); Tal-Or and Cohen (2010); Bálint and Tan (in press).
finding that shot duration tends to decrease across the history of popular film. Salt 55 In an attempt to qualify what it is like to be absorbed in a film, Bálint and Tan (2015)
(2009) reported a linear decrease of average shot length. Cutting and Candan (2015) synthesised a summarising dynamic image schema, from a study of film viewers’
could use his data and added nuances to the general linear decrease trend that they reports on their own experience of absorption while watching a film. Image schemas
replicated. One was that different slopes for shot classes obtained, especially in the are culturally shared embodied cognitive structures that have been identified by
post 1940s’ Hollywood films, another that shot scale, in particular increasing use of cognitive linguists and are hypothesised to underlie cognition and experience and are
wide angle shots, contributed considerably to the decrease in shot duration. more specifically used in metaphorical thinking and use of language. The schema
43 The climax works towards the minimum as the narrative tends to progress here entails the viewer’s self-travelling into the center of the story-world. The self exerts
presenting focused events without disruption, while its scope is wider and shifting in forces to remain inside the story-world, and is taken there in some cases notably by
the set-up and epilogue acts. Consistently, during the climax movement is more the author. In Bálint and Tan’s study, readers of novels turned out to use the same
frequent while shots also tend to be darker compared to the remaining acts. The set- image schemas to describe their experience as film viewers.
up and epilogue contrast most conspicuously with the climax, while complication and 56 It is noteworthy that Münsterberg considers the activity of the basic functional
development exhibit steady in-between values for the low-level feature parameters. mechanisms perception, attention and memory as consisting of 'acts', rather than
44 They do not manifest physically, but their indexing is perceptually straightforward. responses as it would become common in mainstream experimental psychology, see,
One is time shifts, a structural feature. It decreased over the time of a film, in line with e.g., p. 57. 'Imagination' refers to acts resulting in 'products of the active mind' (p. 75)
the film-narratological notion that a film’s action thickens towards a deadline. Three in particular memories, associations and emotions added to perceptions as 'subjective
other higher-level features were more semantic in nature. Character appearances supplements' (p. 46).
dropped after the set-up. Action shots were most numerous at the end of the set-up 57 For an overview of current cognitive emotion theories see Oatley and Laird (2013).
and the beginning of the climax, while conversations levelled down during the climax. 58 Through procedures such as suggestion and juxtaposition of fictional elements and
45 Cutting’s (2016) interpretative qualifications illuminated the stylistic distinctions perspectives, and due to strong coherence of elements, simulations are as engaging as
among the acts. They are most informative and any summarisation would be to allow for recipients’ explorations of social situations, involving the self. This results
detrimental to the value of the analyses. To give just one example For example: 'The in emotions ranging from the more basic to the social and culturally sophisticated
development also has several characteristics in contrast to the complication: its shot type.
durations are a bit longer (Study 1), it has more noncut transitions (Study 2), and it is 59 The stages correspond to Oatley’s (2013) direct, imaginative and self-related modes of
dimmer (Study 4) so that by its end the luminance falls to the psychological and appraisal in film-induced emotion.
literal “darkest moment” for the protagonist' (Cutting, 2016, p. 24). I encourage the 60 There is some literature on the affective potential of mainstream film techniques. See
reader interested in the stylistic comparison of the acts to reading the original article. for example experiments on camera angle and image composition on emotional
46 An example is an analysis by Cutting et al. (2011) of 150 historical films were indexed appraisal of objects and characters such as weakness, tenseness, dominance or
as to movement and shot duration. They observed a decrease of movement with strength reported in Kraft (1991), and an overview of formal and presentation
decreasing shot durations, and reasoned that a basic perceptual mechanism could be features of media messages in relation to their emotional effects by Detenber and
at the basis of this correlation: people can only follow so much movement in a Lang (2011).
duration-limited view. The researchers then analysed newer films that far exceeded 61 This capacity has the obvious adaptive advantage of learning proper responses to
the maximum movement-to- shot duration ratio, and it was found from the public critical situations before they are met in the actual world. The same point has been
discourse around the titles that viewers could not cope with the overload stimulation. made by Currie (1995); see also Currie and Ravenscroft (2002). See also Tan (2008)
47 Dimensions captured in the instrument include comprehension of the narrative, a on pretense play as exercising emotions and adaptive responses in film viewing. My
sense of being in the story-world, emotional responses to story-world events and position on the issue of the authenticity of emotion in response to fictional narrative
characters, and attentional focus on story-world details. The remaining experience is opposed to Walton (1990) who proposed that make-believe worlds can only induce
concepts refer to experiences of entertainment or story-worlds excluding awareness 'as-if emotions'.
of a narrative or any other constructions underlying these. 62 Neuropsychological accounts of film viewer emotions, such as those by Grodal (2009)
48 Hinde (2017) has recently presented evidence showing that self-reported presence is and Zacks’ (2014) emphasise suppression of actions such as fight or flight, by
positively related to response latencies in a dual attention task in which participants prefrontal circuits following appraisals, e.g., of threats or provocations. In my related
were required to respond to a distractor signal while watching a movie. This result application of the cognitive theory to film viewing, viewers can experience a tendency
supports the notion of absorption and loss of awareness of the real world. to flee as an initial tendency, due to automated mimicry or simulation.
49 Variants of presence stress embodied apparent reality of the portrayed world, and the 63 An attempt to measure virtual forms of emotional action readiness in response to
loss of awareness of mediation. Loss of awareness and apparent reality point to the several film genres was reported in Tan (2013a, b).
illusion of being absorbed by the story-world. Presence seems the most immediate 64 In the end virtual action responses in the cinema should be understood as an example
experiential outcome of natural or real-world scene perception and event of the situatedness of emotion in general. (See Griffith & Scarantion, 2009). The
comprehension mechanisms. It was implied in Gibson’s summary of the awareness of conventional set-up of the cinema positions spectators as witnesses to fictional events
film: 'We are onlookers in the situation, …, we are in it and we can adopt point of and appraisals, experiences, expressions and action readiness take shape according to
observation within its space'. the cinematic situation.
50 In this respect, the concept of transportation builds on Gerrig’s (1993) seminal work 65 In the end, viewers know on the basis of their narrative and genre schemas, the film
on the experience of narrative worlds. Transportation requires a 'deictic shift' (Segal, will provide answers to extant questions they have underway.
1995) from the real to the story-world (Segal, 1995 in Bussele and Bilandzic, 2009). 66 Needs of mood management and the occurrence of emotions that help to improve
When the narrative ends the spell is broken and the audience returns into the moods have been shown to explain preference for entertainment products such as
previously inaccessible real world. movies (Zilmann, 2003).
51 In line with general psychological research on empathy, a distinction has been made 67 Sympathy for mainstream protagonists is probably rather immediately induced by
between embodied simulation of film character feeling and a cognitively more our felt similarity and familiarity with them, and more especially in terms of moral
demanding forms of empathy with characters (e.g., Tan, 2013a, b). Complex forms of values (Zillmann, 2000).
empathy that require TOM cognition presuppose that there is an awareness of the 68 The nature of the events and their outcomes corresponding to ups and downs in the
distinction between self and other. The highest degrees of absorption by characters life of a protagonist vary from one genre to another. For example, the action heroine
(measured by items such as 'I became the character') seem characterised by a meets with assaults on her life and deals blows to her stalker; the romance protagonist
complete fusion of the viewers’ self with the character and are properly referred to as with separation and reunion. See also Zillmann’s theory of the enjoyment of drama.
identification (e.g., Cohen, 2001). In this case, viewer emotion is identical with 69 I have introduced these emotions earlier (Tan, 1996) under the heading of Fictional
character emotion. World emotions or F emotions, because they are responses to events in a fictional
52 For example, cinematic techniques of selective or emphatic framing of character world. F emotions include empathetic and non-empathetic emotions. Non-
expression can lead to stronger mimicry or embodied simulation on the part of the empathetic emotions can either be based on sympathy, for example, when we fear
viewer than observation of a person in the real world would allow (e.g., Coplan, 2006; that a bomb will explode to the harm of a protagonist, or not based on sympathy.
Raz et al., 2013). Awe induced by the sight of a sublime landscape would be an example. F-emotions
53 The less demanding forms are based on automated embodied simulation or are defined in opposition to A emotions. The latter category consists of responses to
mirroring, for instance mimicry. Complex forms involve mentalising, or reasoning the film as a human-made artefact instead of a fictional world produced in the
supported by general Theory of Mind schemas and inferencing. The most demanding viewer’s imagination.

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ARTICLE PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | DOI: 10.1057/s41599-018-0111-y

70 The point has been made in Tan and Frijda (1997) and Tan (2009), and more Anderson J, Anderson B (1993) The myth of persistence of vision revisited. J Film
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71 An example is the fear we have when we watch a horror monster in a view not Arnheim R (1974) Art and visual perception. University of California Press,
aligned with any character’s, or without a character being in the neighbourhood of Berkeley
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72 See, for example, study of interest during character vs. action development oriented struction of narrative absorption experiences using image schemata. Projec-
films Doicaru (2016, Ch. 2). tions 9:63–88
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74 Films are segmented (from larger to smaller units) in acts, scenes and events. All absorbing narratives. Sci Study Lit 6(2):176–207
subsequent events induce interest. Every scene offers answers or matches to Baranowski A, Hecht H (2017) One hundred years of photoplay: Hugo Mün-
anticipations induced earlier, leading to enjoyment. Enjoyment tends to reinforce sterberg’s lasting contribution to cognitive movie psychology. Projections 11
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75 Some researchers of media entertainment refer to such regulatory reappraisals as Bezdek MA, Foy JE, Gerrig RJ (2013) Run for it!: viewers’ participatory responses
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seek it, and younger male audiences of extremely violent films have been shown to
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