Special Halloween edition

Here’s the abstract to today’s brown bag seminar in the Marketing Department (331 Uris Hall, 1:30pm, for you locals). If you read the abstract you’ll see the Halloween connection.

On the Consumption of Negative Feelings
(Eduardo B. Andrade, UC Berkeley & Joel B. Cohen, University of Florida)

Abstract:

If the hedonistic assumption (i.e., people’s willingness to pursue pleasure and avoid pain) holds, why do individuals expose themselves to events known to elicit negative feelings? In this article, we assess how (1) the intensity of the negative feelings, (2) the positive feelings in the aftermath, and (3) the coactivation of positive and negative feelings contribute to our understanding of the phenomenon. In a series of 4 studies, horror and non-horror movie watchers are asked to report their positive and negative feelings either after (experiment 1) or while (experiments 2A, 2B, and 3) they are exposed to a horror movie. The results converge with a coactivation-based model and highlight the importance of a protective frame.