Poignancy

• In Event: Complex Emotions in Media-Psychology Research

Abstract

Poignancy is conceptualized as a mixed emotion in which happiness and sadness coexist. Poignant emotions typically arise in response to recognition of the preciousness and transience of key life experiences—family, friendships, achievements. We anticipated that eudaimonic narratives would tend to evoke poignant responses. We found initial evidence that the impact of eudaimonic narratives on reducing delay discounting was mediated by poignant emotion after controlling for other kinds of meaningful emotion. In a follow-up study using a different set of stimuli, the mediating effect of poignancy was not distinguishable from the impact of other meaningful emotions. Our current view is that the relative importance of poignancy in explaining the impact of eudaimonic narratives is likely to vary as a function of specifics of the content of those narratives.

Author

• Michael D. Slater, The Ohio State U