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The paper presents a model of Schadenfreude, pleasure at another’s misfortune, resulting in a typology of cases of this emotion. Four types are singled out: Compensation, Identification, Aversion, and Injustice Schadenfreude. The typology is first tested on a corpus of 472 comments drawn from three social media, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Then a specific corpus of comments is collected and analyzed concerning a specific case of Injustice Schadenfreude, the posts concerning Brexit, United Kingdom leaving the European Union. From the analysis, it emerges that spatial or factual closeness does not look necessary to feel Schadenfreude. Finally, a lexicometric automatic analysis is conducted on the general corpus of Italian comments collected using several hashtags and enriched by comments about the fire of Notre Dame, showing how even complex emotions like Schadenfreude can be automatically extracted from social media.

This article presents two studies that deepen the theme of how soundtracks shape our interpretation of audiovisuals. Embracing a multivariate perspective, Study 1 (N = 118) demonstrated, through an online between-subjects experiment, that two different music scores (melancholic vs. anxious) deeply affected the interpretations of an unknown movie scene in terms of empathy felt toward the main character, impressions of his personality, plot anticipations, and perception of the environment of the scene. With the melancholic music, participants felt empathy toward the character, viewing him as more agreeable and introverted, more oriented to memories than to decisions, while perceiving the environment as cozier. An almost opposite pattern emerged with the anxious music. In Study 2 (N = 92), we replicated the experiment in our lab but with the addition of eye-tracking and pupillometric measurements. Results of Study 1 were largely replicated; moreover, we proved that the anxious score, by increasing the participants’ vigilance and state of alert (wider pupil dilation), favored greater attention to minor details, as in the case of another character who was very hard to be noticed (more time spent on his figure). Results highlight the pervasive nature of the influence of music within the process of interpretation of visual scenes.

This work explores how humans manage the communication of a displeasing and face-threatening truth and how the communicative strategies of the sender and the reaction of the receiver are influenced by their attachment style. Two experimental studies demonstrate that the attachment styles of both senders and receivers can influence the communicative styles of the sender, the emotions that both senders and receivers feel or attribute to their interlocutor, and the reactions of the receivers. In Study 1, couples of participants played a bogus computer game, ostensibly to test their abilities. Subsequently, “the spokesperson” was given the task to communicate to the “the receiver” a bogus low score of the other and a high score of oneself. Finally, all participants completed an adult Attachment Style Questionnaire (ASQ). A content analysis of the verbal messages of the spokespersons showed two main communication styles: frankness and mitigation. The results suggest that the spokespersons’ attachment style influences these communication styles. Using a similar procedure, Study 2 showed that spokespersons with a high avoidant attachment more frequently used frankness when communicating low scores to the receivers. Furthermore, the emotions and impressions reported by anxious and avoidant spokespersons and receivers, respectively, confirm the negative model of the self or the other, typical, respectively, in anxious and avoidant attachment. The detection of communicative strategies stemming from different attachment styles might be of use in user modeling and the planning of personalized systems.

One of the most tangible effects of music is its ability to alter our perception of time. Research on waiting times and time estimation of musical excerpts has attested its veritable effects. Nevertheless, there exist contrasting results regarding several musical features’ influence on time perception. When considering emotional valence and arousal, there is some evidence that positive affect music fosters time underestimation, whereas negative affect music leads to overestimation. Instead, contrasting results exist with regard to arousal. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, a systematic investigation has not yet been conducted within the audiovisual domain, wherein music might improve the interaction between the user and the audiovisual media by shaping the recipients’ time perception. Through the current between-subjects online experiment (n = 565), we sought to analyze the influence that four soundtracks (happy, relaxing, sad, scary), differing in valence and arousal, exerted on the time estimation of a short movie, as compared to a no-music condition. The results reveal that (1) the mere presence of music led to time overestimation as opposed to the absence of music, (2) the soundtracks that were perceived as more arousing (i.e., happy and scary) led to time overestimation. The findings are discussed in terms of psychological and phenomenological models of time perception.

The work defines the sigh as a type of breath expressing or communicating specific physical or mental internal states. To investigate the meanings of the sigh, the paper presents analyses of written and oral corpora, finding out that it may express different emotions like boredom or frustration, but also positive meanings like self-encouragement; then it focuses on the use of sighs in political debates. Finally a perception study shows participants’ agreement on the meanings of sighs in terms of valence and arousal. These results lay the bases for future studies to set a clearer distinction between sighs and other vocalisations as well as other effects on its meaning caused by the combination with other body signals like rolling eyes or shaking head.

The paper argues for the importance and richness of gaze communication during orchestra and choir conduction, and presents three studies on this issue. First, an interview with five choir and orchestra conductors reveals that they are not so deeply aware of the potentialities of gaze to convey indications in music performance. A conductor who was utterly conscious of the importance of gaze communication, however, is Leonard Bernstein, who conducted a performance of Haydn’s Symphony No. 88 using his face and gaze only. Therefore, a fragment of this performance is analyzed in an observational study, where a qualitative analysis singles out the items of gaze exploited by Bernstein and their corresponding meanings. Finally, a perception study is presented in which three of these items are submitted to expert, non-expert, and amateur participants. The results show that while the signal for “start” is fairly recognized, the other two, “pay attention” and “crescendo and accelerando” are more difficult to interpret. Furthermore, significant differences in gaze item recognition emerge among participants: experts not only recognize them more, but they also take advantage of viewing the items with audio-visual vs. video-only presentation, while non-experts do not take advantage of audio in their recognition.

The paper presents a survey study that investigates the self-conscious emotion of feeling offended and provides an account of it in terms of a socio-cognitive model of emotions. Based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the participants’ answers, the study provides a definition of offense and of the feeling of offense in terms of its “mental ingredients,” the beliefs and goals represented in a person who feels this emotion, and finds out what are its necessary and aggravating conditions, what are the explicit and implicit causes of offense (the other’s actions, omissions, inferred mental states), what negative evaluations are offensive and why. It also shows that the feeling of offense is not only triggered about honor or public image, but it is mainly felt in personal affective relationships. The paper finally highlights that high self-esteem may protect a person against the feeling of offense and the constellation of negative emotions triggered by it.

This paper investigates the notion of precision in cognition and communication, it overviews the gestures conveying precision analysed in the literature on multimodality and provides an analysis of the precision gesture of the beak in a corpus of oral university examinations. Based on a corpus of transcribed Italian real speech,a linguistic analysis is also proposed of the beak’s lexical affiliates (the adverbs esclusivamente, proprio, appunto) and of their possible meanings.

Research on socially aware systems requires fine-grained knowledge of the mechanisms of persuasion in order to promote civic knowledge and aware political participation. Within humour studies, political parody is generally considered a simple pleasant weapon for political evaluation , currently explained by referring to the so called just a joke effect (Nabi, 2007). Indeed the funny side of parody can induce positive emotions, but it also includes a discrediting act that sometimes produces a bitter laughter. The present study aims to understand the role played by negative and moral emotions aroused by parody. A parody is defined as a communicative behaviour (a discourse, text, body movement, song) that imitates a communicative behaviour or trait displayed by some Target by reproducing it in a distorted way, with the aim of making fun of the Target. Based on a socio-cognitive approach, a distinction is made between surface and deep parody (Poggi and D’Errico, 2013), with the former simply imitating behaviours actually displayed by the Target, and the latter implying a (humorous) re-categorization of the Target. The paper studies the effect of these two different types of parody on persuasion processes. Results show that the deep parody, as opposed to surface parody, triggers more negative emotions, and in particular indignation, that in turn lead to more negative evaluations of the Target. Moreover, the moral priming of parody is influenced by the Target politician’s gender.