The Narrative Enjoyment and Appreciation Rationale

Abstract

The narrative enjoyment and appreciation rationale (NEAR) builds on dual-process logic to distinguish these two forms of audience response to media entertainment shaped by either an intuitive or deliberative processing system. Three message features are critical in determining how these systems govern response: (1) the absence or presence of intuition conflict in the narrative, (2) the extent to which different intuitions are made salient (i.e., emphasized in the plot), and (3) the satisfaction/thwarting of those salient intuitions, where satisfaction refers to reward for acts that conform to intuitions, and thwarting refers to the inverse of this. When all salient intuitive needs are satisfied by entertainment experience, positive affect produced by intuitive processes is labeled enjoyment. By comparison, when the entertainment experience satisfies the most salient intuitive needs, but not all salient intuitive needs, positive affect produced by deliberative processing is labeled appreciation.

Television awards and integrative complexity: A preliminary linguistic examination.

“…10There is some evidence in previous research that supports the assumption that different metrics display different linguistic patterns in terms of assessment. For example, the narrative enjoyment and appreciation rationale model (Tamborini et al, 2021) defines appreciation as positive feelings toward entertainment media that deliberately engages higher levels of cognitive processing. Similarly, Inzlicht et al (2018) asserts that cognitive demanding activities can be rewarding despite the effort and Vorderer (2011) argues that being entertained means “becoming involved with an important topic, of elaborating on existing thoughts and beliefs, of pleasure and of sadness, of fun and of melancholy, of emotional kicks and of deeper thinking” (p. 60; see also Oliver & Bartsch, 2010).…”