Why do we engage (and keep engaging) in tragic and sad stories? Negativity bias and engagement in narratives eliciting negative feelings

Abstract

Our human tendency to remember more and pay more attention to negative events (rather than positive ones) may be at the core of our ‘enjoyment’ of the arts. Indeed, if we engage in sad and tragic stories, it may well be because we have a built-in propensity to be affected by situations eliciting negative emotions (i.e. a psychological phenomenon called the ‘Negativity Bias’). A good example of this seemingly paradoxical tendency is Fernando de Rojas's Celestina (1499). Although the premise of the story is that of an amour courtois between two young lovers, Calisto and Melibea, the story ends with a suicide and, in between, there are also one murder, one accident leading to death and two executions. And yet, it was a bestseller at the time. This attraction to stories that elicit negative affects is also hypothesized to be the result of evolutionary pressures.