James Bond in Angst?

Abstract

Current cognitive accounts of film understanding emphasize the role of processing narrative content in an elaborative manner, including the development of an appropriate situational model that relies on inferences about protagonists’ emotional states. The present study investigates such inferences while watching a narrative film and aims at clarifying the role of the musical leitmotif in supporting this process. Participants watched short segments from James Bond movies, which depicted situations that were likely to elicit a particular emotion in the main protagonist. The emotional reaction was not directly expressed by the protagonist but was shown on screen in a respective target sentence. In one condition (concordant), this statement matched the situation. In the other condition (nonconcordant), the statement indicated an antagonistic emotion. The reading times of the emotional target sentences were measured. After reading the target sentence, participants continued to watch the film clip by pressing a button. The results show that emotionally nonconcordant target-sentences led to longer reading times, whereas the musical leitmotif had no significant impact.