Cognitive Identification and Empathy
Cognitive Identification and Empathy
This chapter demonstrates that emotional empathy and cognitive identification play a crucial role in the reception of visual fiction, and also that cognition and emotion are two different aspects of one information system. It uses an example from Psycho to illustrate the means by which cognitive identification causes empathy, because cognition is intimately linked to motivation. It analyses the intersubjective status of emotions and describes the cognitive labelling of emotions as a narrative strategy. It also discusses the way in which narrative processes can be described as homeostatic systems, that is, as an alternative to the psychoanalytic description of narration as driven by ‘narrative desire’. The chapter examines the applicability of two concepts of homeostasis — telic and paratelic motivation — as tools for describing visual fiction and entertainment.
Keywords: emotional empathy, cognitive identification, visual fiction, cognition, emotion, telic motivation, paratelic motivation
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