"Negative emotions" live in stories, not in the hearts of readers who enjoy them

Abstract

The commendably ambitious project by Menninghaus et al. fails because its main connective tissue - "negative emotions" - is beyond the grasp of the authors' largely literary approach. The critique focuses on their treatment of the Paradox of Fiction, the neglect of the biological, adaptive nature of emotions, and the absence of convincing empirical support for key aspects of the proposed model.