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Cited by 334

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 24 of the 24 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Do readers mentally represent characters' emotional states?

Open access
Gernsbacher, Morton Ann, Goldsmith, H. Hill, Robertson, Rachel R.W.·1992·Cognition & Emotion
DOI 10.1080/02699939208411061
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Abstract

Subjects read stories that described concrete actions, such as a main character stealing money from a store where his best friend worked and later learning that his friend had been fired. Following each story, subjects read a target sentence that contained an emotion word that either matched the emotional state implied by the story (e.g. guilt) or mismatched that emotional state. In Experiment 1, target sentences were read more slowly when the mismatched emotion words were the perceived opposites of the emotional states implied by the stories (e.g. pride). In Experiment 2, target sentences were read more slowly when the mismatched emotion words shared the affective valence of the implied emotional state; therefore, readers must represent more than simply the affective valence of the emotional states. Instead of reading target sentences that contained matching versus mismatching emotion words, subjects in Experiment 3 simply pronounced matching versus mismatching emotion words. Mismatching emotion words were pronounced more slowly. These experiments suggest that readers form explicit, lifelike, mental representations of fictional characters' emotional states, and readers form these representations as a normal part of reading comprehension.

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Metadata

Authors
Gernsbacher, M. A., Goldsmith, H. H., & Robertson, R. R. W.
Venue
Cognition & Emotion
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Published
1992-03
Volume
6
Issue
2
Pages
89-111
ISSN
  • 0269-9931 (ISSN-L)
  • 1464-0600
DOI
10.1080/02699939208411061
OpenAlex
W2063324404
Cited by
334
References
24
FWCI
105.67
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Do readers mentally represent characters' emotional states? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1080/02699939208411061
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Gernsbacher, M. A., Goldsmith, H. H., & Robertson, R. R. W. (1992). Do readers mentally represent characters' emotional states? Cognition & Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699939208411061

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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