Evert van Emde Boas

Emotional arousal when watching drama increases pain threshold and social bonding

Fiction, whether in the form of storytelling or plays, has a particular attraction for us: we repeatedly return to it and are willing to invest money and time in doing so. Why this is so is an evolutionary enigma that has been surprisingly underexplored. We hypothesize that emotionally arousing drama, in particular, triggers the same neurobiological mechanism (the endorphin system, reflected in increased pain thresholds) that underpins anthropoid primate and human social bonding. We show that, compared to subjects who watch an emotionally neutral film, subjects who watch an emotionally arousing film have increased pain thresholds and an increased sense of group bonding.

Individual Differences in Transportation Into Narrative Drama.

Transportation, the experience of feeling “transported” into a fictional world, differs widely across individuals. We examined transportation in 3 studies. Study 1 investigated links between individual differences in various measures of audience response, whereas the latter 2 studies examined links between trait measures (independent variables) and audience response (dependent variables). Study 1 found that individual differences in self-reported transportation to a film explained variation in virtually all other dependent measures, such as identification with characters, emotion, and attribution of blame for the protagonists struggles. Group bonding after watching the film was nonlinearly related to endorphin response (as measured by pain threshold), and transportation related to these variables as well (although more weakly). Study 2 found that individual differences in celebrity worship predicted transportation, as well as tendency to identify with the characters and approve of their behavior. Study 3 demonstrated that individual differences in trait measures of sensation seeking and empathy independently predicted viewers’ transportation in 2 very different film genres. Transportation measures for both films were highly correlated, suggesting that tendency to be transported may be less genre-specific than other dependent measures. Altogether, these results illustrate the usefulness of individual differences approaches in the psychological study of fiction.

Characterization in Ancient Greek Literature.

This is the fourth volume in the series Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative. The book deals with the narratological concepts of character and characterization and explores the textual devices used for purposes of characterization by ancient Greek authors from Homer to Heliodorus.

Analyzing Agamemnon: Conversation Analysis and Particles in Greek Tragic Dialogue

THE AIM OF IS THIS PAPER is to demonstrate the utility of Conversation Analysis (CA), a strand of sociolinguistics, for the appreciation of ancient Greek dialogue texts, with a particular view to the use of Greek particles. Since CA appears to be largely unknown within classics, I will begin by providing a basic outline of its principles and methods. The heart of my discussion, however, is formed by a contrastive analysis of two dialogue scenes from Greek tragedy—Aeschylus Agamemnon 931–44 and Sophocles Ajax 1346–73—both featuring a recalcitrant Agamemnon as the object of a delicate piece of persuasion. I hope to show that an analysis along the lines proposed below may shed new light not only on the workings of several Greek particles whose functions are sometimes still poorly understood (notably καὶ μήν, μέντοι, ἀλλά, and γάρ), but also on the dynamics of Greek tragic dialogue more generally.

The Tutor’s Beard

In this paper I discuss several cases of controversial speaker-line attribution in Greek tragedy, with the overall goal of showing that greater attention needs to be paid to gender-specific language in the business of textual criticism. Differences between male and female speech in Greek drama may offer crucial indications for the attribution of contested lines. I argue that the distribution of E. El.959-966 in the manuscripts should be maintained, primarily for two gender-related reasons: women in tragedy do not give commands to servants if free men are present, and the discussion of clothing at 966 is typical of Electra’s female concerns. For the first half of the ‘recognition duet’ between Helen and Menelaus at E. Hel.625-659, I argue, on the basis of recent work on male and female lyric, that 638-640 should be assigned to Helen, and that there is no need to avoid giving 636 or 654-655 to Menelaus because they are ‘too emotional’ for a man. In discussing these passages I seek to contribute to the growing understanding of the distinct characteristics of tragic male and female language, and to argue for the role that the study of those characteristics can play in textual criticism.