Aesthetics and emotion in entertainment media

The different perspectives in psychological aesthetics contribute to media psychology in complementary ways. A behavioral perspective stresses pleasur e and challenge as motives for exploring both proximal (e.g., painting) and distal (e.g., television) media, and maintains that people prefer moderate levels of stimulation. The constructivist viewpoint emphasizes the multila yered and open-ended nature of aesthetic artifacts and holds that pleasure emerges from the coherent interpretation of a work that may be personally m eaningful. Emotion theories either focus on action or experience in everyda y life and in the narrative structure of proximal and distal media. The act ion orientation is tied to a behavioral-cognitive perspective and the idea that recipients can selectively engage artifacts that modulate pleasure and arousal. The experience orientation is linked with the psychodynamic/pheno menological viewpoint and the projection of personal meaning in the interpr etation of multilayered artifacts. New interactive media forms provide a,l occasion for sensory modulation of experience and for the experience of age ncy through the manipulation of possible story outcomes. The active partici pation of audience members is governed by their ability to master the dista l interface of the interactive console in much the same way that artists mu st master proximal techniques of manipulating a medium, such as paint.