The relevance-affective model: explaining narrative empathy within relevance theory
Author(s)
Pozner, Ismaël
Date issued
July 29, 2022
Number of pages
72
Subjects
narrative empathy pragmatics relevance non-propositionality metacognitive acquaintance appraisal theory appraisals emotions perspective-taking engagement
Abstract
Narrative empathy is the sharing of similar feelings with fictional characters as a result of perceiving or imagining their depicted situation. Cognitive narratology presents interesting accounts on narrative empathy but fails to explain it from a processing standpoint. Conversely, (narrative) empathy has not been explained using relevance theory (RT) despite the development of non-propositional effects in the field over the last decades. There is untapped potential in explaining narrative empathy using new notions from RT.
This goal of this interdisciplinary work is to present a model called the Model of Affective Relevance (MAR) to describe the functioning of empathy and narrative empathy. I gather insights about (narrative) empathy in the literature affective science and cognitive narratology to establish the crucial components of the model. I use RT as a chassis and add successive addons to incorporate new cognitive mechanisms to fit the requirements for narrative empathy. The first addon is procedural meaning to integrate affective effects and components of emotional communication. The second addon is metacognitive acquaintance in which we introduce non-propositional representations of a novel kind in RT to explain mentalistic inferences. The third addon is goal relevance to account for engagement within RT and differences of appraisals for characters in stories. With its design, the MAR can describe appraisals as patterns of activations, the way experiences are stored and deployed in processing, and the mutual influences of affects on cognition and vice-versa within the scope of RT.
I propose that empathy is only one possible outcome of the model in which we, observers, engage our own goals in a target. There must be connivance between the target’s attributed goals and ours from our perspective. This inferential process relies on a constant affective attunement in which processing cues of the character’s situation activates relevant representations called ‘metacognitive acquaintance’. The latter notion involves activations of previous experiences associating events to mental states and implies an update of the observer’s (or reader’s) affective state. Finally, I discuss the MAR by comparing it to other models and show how they bring interesting observations about the representational nature of the MAR and address some of its issues. I suggest that the MAR sheds lights not only on narrative empathy but also on the role of non-propositionality RT.
This goal of this interdisciplinary work is to present a model called the Model of Affective Relevance (MAR) to describe the functioning of empathy and narrative empathy. I gather insights about (narrative) empathy in the literature affective science and cognitive narratology to establish the crucial components of the model. I use RT as a chassis and add successive addons to incorporate new cognitive mechanisms to fit the requirements for narrative empathy. The first addon is procedural meaning to integrate affective effects and components of emotional communication. The second addon is metacognitive acquaintance in which we introduce non-propositional representations of a novel kind in RT to explain mentalistic inferences. The third addon is goal relevance to account for engagement within RT and differences of appraisals for characters in stories. With its design, the MAR can describe appraisals as patterns of activations, the way experiences are stored and deployed in processing, and the mutual influences of affects on cognition and vice-versa within the scope of RT.
I propose that empathy is only one possible outcome of the model in which we, observers, engage our own goals in a target. There must be connivance between the target’s attributed goals and ours from our perspective. This inferential process relies on a constant affective attunement in which processing cues of the character’s situation activates relevant representations called ‘metacognitive acquaintance’. The latter notion involves activations of previous experiences associating events to mental states and implies an update of the observer’s (or reader’s) affective state. Finally, I discuss the MAR by comparing it to other models and show how they bring interesting observations about the representational nature of the MAR and address some of its issues. I suggest that the MAR sheds lights not only on narrative empathy but also on the role of non-propositionality RT.
Publication type
master thesis