Patterns of cognitive dissonance in readers’ engagement with characters

Autori

  • Marco Caracciolo University of Groningen, the Netherlands

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13130/2037-2426/2903

Parole chiave:

Cognitive dissonance, reader-response, characters, empathy

Abstract

Leon Festinger’s account of cognitive dissonance, published in 1957, has become one of the most successful theories in the history of social psychology. I argue that Festinger’s framework—and the research it generated over the last sixty years—can shed light on key aspects of readers’ engagement with literary characters. Literature can invite the audience to vicariously experience characters’ dissonance through an empathetic mechanism, but it can also induce dissonant states in readers by encouraging them to take on attitudes and beliefs that are significantly different from their own. I suggest that there are two strategies—or patterns of reader-response—through which the audience can cope with the dissonance between their own worldview and the characters’: attitude change and imaginative resistance. In the first, readers adjust their own beliefs and values according to what they have experienced and learned in adopting characters’ perspectives. By contrast, in imaginative resistance readers’ worldview prevents them from establishing an empathetic bond with characters. I integrate these hypotheses into a model that builds on theoretical as well as empirical insights into reader-response.

Biografia autore

Marco Caracciolo, University of Groningen, the Netherlands

Ricercatore presso il dipartimento di Arti, Culture e Media.

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Pubblicato

03-06-2013

Come citare

Caracciolo, M. (2013). Patterns of cognitive dissonance in readers’ engagement with characters. ENTHYMEMA, (8), 21–37. https://doi.org/10.13130/2037-2426/2903

Fascicolo

Sezione

Cognitive Poetics - A cura di Stefano Calabrese e Stefano Ballerio
Ricevuto 2013-03-12
Accettato 2013-04-04
Pubblicato 2013-06-03