Great Expectations—Narratives and the Elicitation of Aesthetic Chills

Abstract

We clarify the relation between the perception of narratives and aesthetic emotions by relating them to mechanisms of knowledge-acquisition. Stories elicit emotions by diverging from expectations one may formulate on the basis of their properties. The greater the divergence, the stronger the emotion. Models of emotions, expectations, and knowledge-acquisition are briefly presented. We relate them to research pertaining to narrative structures and provide a mathematical description for aesthetic emotions. We conclude by underlining the fundamental role played by aesthetic emotions in the workings of the human mind.