Keith Oatley
Biographic Data
| ID | 368334 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Keith Oatley |
| GIVEN NAMES | Keith |
| FAMILY NAME | Oatley |
| SIGNATURE | OATLEY K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2088-9770 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 268 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Film and Meaning
Most films are narrative stories about intentions and the vicissitudes they meet. Two themes of this chapter concern the emotions of people who read or watch these stories, and the psychological principle of projection. Empirically, it has been found that engagement with fictional stories, especially when they are artistic, enables people to increase their emotion-based empathy and their understanding of others. Two kinds of story occur frequentl…
Discrete emotions discovered by contactless measurement of facial blood flows
Experiential and behavioural aspects of emotions can be measured readily but developing a contactless measure of emotions' physiological aspects has been a major challenge. We hypothesised that different emotion-evoking films can produce distinctive facial blood flow patterns that can serve as physiological signatures of discrete emotions. To test this hypothesis, we created a new Transdermal Optical Imaging system that uses a conventional video …
How poetry evokes emotions
Poetry evokes emotions. It does so, according to the theory we present, from three sorts of simulation. They each can prompt emotions, which are communications both within the brain and among people. First, models of a poem's semantic contents can evoke emotions as do models that occur in depictions of all kinds, from novels to perceptions. Second, mimetic simulations of prosodic cues, such as meter, rhythm, and rhyme, yield particular emotional …
Social Functions of Emotions in Life and Imaginative Culture
One chapter in the science of emotion has focused, largely through an individualist lens, on just a few emotions: the Ekman Six. Considerable debate has occurred and entrenched positions have ensued. In this essay we offer evidence and argument revealing that there are not only six emotions, nor states measured as valence and arousal, but upwards of 20 discrete emotions that contribute to our subjective and social lives. These emotions enable the…
Challenges and Promises of a Social Functional Approach: Response to Commentaries
Art as Expression of Emotion Explored in Anna Karenina
Robin Collingwood proposed that works of art are expressions of artists’ emotions and that those who engage with them can become better able to understand emotions of their own. We apply this approach to Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, thought by many to be the world's best novel. In this book, Tolstoy wrote of situations in ways that can evoke surprise. He showed its protagonists presenting themselves as if on a stage, but they are ambivalent: they…
Imagination in the Generation of Pictures and Interpersonal Scenarios
In Imagination, Jim Davies explains that most humans have mental imagery: an ability to make pictures in the mind without immediate perceptual input-as we do when we dream. Davies writes programs that enable computers to do something similar. Given a few words of description, a computer can generate pictures with several objects arranged in appropriate ways. Jonathan Gilmore’s Apt Imaginings is about whether engagement in works of fiction is cont…
Narrative in Mind
Secular pilgrimage to places associated with writers, musicians, and visual artists
In 29 informal interviews and 91 online questionnaires, we asked people about secular pilgrimages mostly to places associated with writers, musicians, and visual artists. Pilgrims often felt strong emotions at their destinations: mean ratings of how moved they felt on 0-to-10 scales in the informal and online studies were 6.56 and 6.14, respectively. In the online study 26 people made visits to writers’ locations, 47 to musicians’ locations, and …
Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel. The Emotional Mind: The Affective Roots of Culture and Cognition
Article Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel. The Emotional Mind: The Affective Roots of Culture and Cognition was published on December 1, 2019 in the journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture (volume 3, issue 2)
Human Choices
Our Minds, Our Selves: A Brief History of Psychology
Fiction: Simulation of Social Worlds
Worlds of the possible: Abstraction, imagination, consciousness
The ability to think in abstractions depends on the imagination. An important evolutionary change was the installation of a suite of six imaginative activities that emerge at first in childhood, which include empathy, symbolic play, and theory-of-mind. These abilities can be built upon in adulthood to enable the production of oral and written stories. As a technology, writing has three aspects: material, skill based, and societal. It is in fictio…
Emotion and narrative fiction: Interactive influences before, during, and after reading
Emotions are central to the experience of literary narrative fiction. Affect and mood can influence what book people choose, based partly on whether their goal is to change or maintain their current emotional state. Once having chosen a book, the narrative itself acts to evoke and transform emotions, both directly through the events and characters depicted and through the cueing of emotionally valenced memories. Once evoked by the story, these em…
Exploring the link between reading fiction and empathy: Ruling out individual differences and examining outcomes
Readers of fiction tend to have better abilities of empathy and theory of mind (Mar et al., Journal of Personality 74: 1047–1078, 2006). We present a study designed to replicate this finding, rule out one possible explanation, and extend the assessment of social outcomes. In order to rule out the role of personality, we first identified Openness as the most consistent correlate. This trait was then statistically controlled for, along with two oth…
Defenseless against art? Impact of reading fiction on emotion in avoidantly attached individuals
The Function of Fiction is the Abstraction and Simulation of Social Experience
Fiction literature has largely been ignored by psychology researchers because its only function seems to be entertainment, with no connection to empirical validity. We argue that literary narratives have a more important purpose. They offer models or simulations of the social world via abstraction, simplification, and compression. Narrative fiction also creates a deep and immersive simulative experience of social interactions for readers. This si…
Impact of Life Events and Difficulties on the Mental Health of Chinese Immigrant Women
Robert Plutchik (1927-2006)
On the definition and function of emotions
Bookworms versus nerds: Exposure to fiction versus non-fiction, divergent associations with social ability, and the simulation of fictional social worlds
Love and Personal Relationships: Navigating on the Border Between the Ideal and the Real
In the psychological literature, love is often seen as a construct inseparable from that of close, interpersonal relationships. As a result, it has been often assumed that the same motivational factors underlie both phenomena. This often leads researchers to propose that love does not exist in itself—that it is an emotion which stems solely from a need for attachment, fulfillment of reproductive aims, or for social exchange. The popular cultural …
Meetings of minds: Dialogue, sympathy, and identification, in reading fiction
Memories Prompted by Emotions—Emotions Attached to Memories: Studies of Depression and of Reading Fiction
A taxonomy of the emotions of literary response and a theory of identification in fictional narrative
The language of emotions: An analysis of a semantic field
This paper uses a theory of the emotions to motivate a semantic analysis of English words referring to emotions. The theory assumes that emotions have a two-fold communicative function, both externally amongst members of the species, and internally within the brain so as to bypass complex inferences. It implies that there is a small number of basic signals that can set up characteristic emotional modes within the organism, roughly corresponding t…
Why Fiction May be Twice as True as Fact: Fiction as Cognitive and Emotional Simulation
Although fiction treats themes of psychological importance, it has been excluded from psychology because it is seen as involving flawed empirical method. But fiction is not empirical truth. It is simulation that runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers. In any simulation, coherence truths have priority over correspondences. Moreover, in the simulations of fiction, personal truths can be explored that allow readers to…
Basic emotions, rationality, and folk theory
Answering the question of whether there are basic emotions requires considering the functions of emotions. We propose that just a few emotions are basic and that they have functions in managing action. When no fully rational solution is available for a problem of action, a basic emotion functions to prompt us in a direction that is better than a random choice. We contrast this kind of theory with a componential approach which we argue is either a…
Bookworms versus nerds: Exposure to fiction versus non-fiction, divergent associations with social ability, and the simulation of fictional social worlds
Love and Personal Relationships: Navigating on the Border Between the Ideal and the Real
In the psychological literature, love is often seen as a construct inseparable from that of close, interpersonal relationships. As a result, it has been often assumed that the same motivational factors underlie both phenomena. This often leads researchers to propose that love does not exist in itself—that it is an emotion which stems solely from a need for attachment, fulfillment of reproductive aims, or for social exchange. The popular cultural …
The Intentional and Social Nature of Human Emotions: Reconsideration of the Distinction Between Basic and Non‐basic Emotions
Psychiatric symptoms and conflict among personal plans
In everyday life, the existence of personal goals is indicated by the activities in which people are engaged, such as leisure interests, occupation and relationships. Incompatibility between goals was predicted to be one source of conflict associated with poor mental health symptoms. A series of studies using different methods (interviews and questionnaires) to measure the degree of perceived conflict in the daily activities of young and mature s…
Refutation and the appropriation of truth in psychoanalysis
It is important in psychoanalysis to retain Popper's emphasis on theories that can be mistaken, and which therefore can be improved. This idea about the value of mistakes should not be rejected, as Will has done in his recent article. The main problem about the status of psychoanalysis is not, as Will argues, to understand science in such a way that psychoanalytic theories will be seen to be scientific. A prior question is whether the implicit pe…
Conflict and Control Among Mental Agents
Journal Article CONFLICT AND CONTROL AMONG MENTAL AGENTS Get access Keith Oatley Keith Oatley Dept. of Psychology, University of GlasgowGlasgow, G12 8RT, Scotland Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Semantics, Volume 5, Issue 2, 1986, Pages 165–168, https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/5.2.165 Published: 01 April 1986
Towards a Cognitive Theory of Emotions
A theory is proposed that emotions are cognitively based states which co-ordinate quasi-autonomous processes in the nervous system. Emotions provide a biological solution to certain problems of transition between plans, in systems with multiple goals. Their function is to accomplish and maintain these transitions, and to communicate them to ourselves and others. Transitions occur at significant junctures of plans when the evaluation of success in…
Psychiatric symptoms and conflict among personal plans
In everyday life, the existence of personal goals is indicated by the activities in which people are engaged, such as leisure interests, occupation and relationships. Incompatibility between goals was predicted to be one source of conflict associated with poor mental health symptoms. A series of studies using different methods (interviews and questionnaires) to measure the degree of perceived conflict in the daily activities of young and mature s…
The language of emotions: An analysis of a semantic field
This paper uses a theory of the emotions to motivate a semantic analysis of English words referring to emotions. The theory assumes that emotions have a two-fold communicative function, both externally amongst members of the species, and internally within the brain so as to bypass complex inferences. It implies that there is a small number of basic signals that can set up characteristic emotional modes within the organism, roughly corresponding t…
Guided imagery in brief psychodynamic therapy: Outcome and process
Twenty‐one clients were assigned to three conditions in a four‐month trial of once per week psychodynamic therapy. Clients in an imagery condition worked with subpersonalities elicited by psychosynthesis guided visual imagery. Clients in a non‐imagery condition worked in a similar way, but without guided imagery. The third condition was a minimal contact control group in which clients had all assessments (at baseline, mid‐point, outcome and follo…
Living together
A review of Unnatural emotions: Everyday sentiments on a Micronesian atoll and their challenge to Western theory, by Catherine A. Lutz (1988). Chicago University Press, ISBN 0-226-49721-6 (hbk) £27.95; 0-226-49722-4 (pbk) £14.50
Best laid schemes: The Psychology of Emotions
Keith Oatley draws on theories from psychology, philosophy and linguistics, as well as writings from other social sciences, to show how emotions are central to any understanding of human actions and mental life. --From publisher's description.
Basic emotions, rationality, and folk theory
Answering the question of whether there are basic emotions requires considering the functions of emotions. We propose that just a few emotions are basic and that they have functions in managing action. When no fully rational solution is available for a problem of action, a basic emotion functions to prompt us in a direction that is better than a random choice. We contrast this kind of theory with a componential approach which we argue is either a…
A taxonomy of the emotions of literary response and a theory of identification in fictional narrative
The Intentional and Social Nature of Human Emotions: Reconsideration of the Distinction Between Basic and Non‐basic Emotions
Emotional effects of reading excerpts from short stories by James Joyce
Meetings of minds: Dialogue, sympathy, and identification, in reading fiction
Memories Prompted by Emotions—Emotions Attached to Memories: Studies of Depression and of Reading Fiction
Why Fiction May be Twice as True as Fact: Fiction as Cognitive and Emotional Simulation
Although fiction treats themes of psychological importance, it has been excluded from psychology because it is seen as involving flawed empirical method. But fiction is not empirical truth. It is simulation that runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers. In any simulation, coherence truths have priority over correspondences. Moreover, in the simulations of fiction, personal truths can be explored that allow readers to…
Love and Personal Relationships: Navigating on the Border Between the Ideal and the Real
In the psychological literature, love is often seen as a construct inseparable from that of close, interpersonal relationships. As a result, it has been often assumed that the same motivational factors underlie both phenomena. This often leads researchers to propose that love does not exist in itself—that it is an emotion which stems solely from a need for attachment, fulfillment of reproductive aims, or for social exchange. The popular cultural …
Bookworms versus nerds: Exposure to fiction versus non-fiction, divergent associations with social ability, and the simulation of fictional social worlds
Impact of Life Events and Difficulties on the Mental Health of Chinese Immigrant Women
Robert Plutchik (1927-2006)
On the definition and function of emotions
The Function of Fiction is the Abstraction and Simulation of Social Experience
Fiction literature has largely been ignored by psychology researchers because its only function seems to be entertainment, with no connection to empirical validity. We argue that literary narratives have a more important purpose. They offer models or simulations of the social world via abstraction, simplification, and compression. Narrative fiction also creates a deep and immersive simulative experience of social interactions for readers. This si…
Exploring the link between reading fiction and empathy: Ruling out individual differences and examining outcomes
Readers of fiction tend to have better abilities of empathy and theory of mind (Mar et al., Journal of Personality 74: 1047–1078, 2006). We present a study designed to replicate this finding, rule out one possible explanation, and extend the assessment of social outcomes. In order to rule out the role of personality, we first identified Openness as the most consistent correlate. This trait was then statistically controlled for, along with two oth…
Defenseless against art? Impact of reading fiction on emotion in avoidantly attached individuals
Emotion and narrative fiction: Interactive influences before, during, and after reading
Emotions are central to the experience of literary narrative fiction. Affect and mood can influence what book people choose, based partly on whether their goal is to change or maintain their current emotional state. Once having chosen a book, the narrative itself acts to evoke and transform emotions, both directly through the events and characters depicted and through the cueing of emotionally valenced memories. Once evoked by the story, these em…
Worlds of the possible: Abstraction, imagination, consciousness
The ability to think in abstractions depends on the imagination. An important evolutionary change was the installation of a suite of six imaginative activities that emerge at first in childhood, which include empathy, symbolic play, and theory-of-mind. These abilities can be built upon in adulthood to enable the production of oral and written stories. As a technology, writing has three aspects: material, skill based, and societal. It is in fictio…
Psychology (32 works) · Social Psychology (22 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Cognitive psychology (13 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Art (12 works) · Literature (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Media Influence and Health (9 works)