Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen

• PhD
• Postdoc at Aarhus University

On the surface, fear and humor seem like polar opposite states of mind, yet throughout our lives they continually interact. In this paper, we synthesize neurobiological, psychological, and evolutionary research on fear and humor, arguing that the two are deeply connected. The evolutionary origins of humor reside in play, a medium through which anim...

Many studies have examined characteristic verbal aspects of Donald J. Trump’s political communication, from his authoritarian rhetoric to his preference for short words and simple sentences, as expressions of his populism. This article focuses on his use of non-verbal voice quality. In analyzing the “Trump rallies” and other materials from his succ...

The humanities are centrally concerned with such human subjectivity—such thinking, feeling, and wondering—as goes into the appreciation of a painting or the absorbed and responsive reading of a novel. It is often argued that the intrinsic subjectivity of these experiences renders them inaccessible to objective science, which seeks to avoid subjecti...

We hypothesize that fictional stories are highly successful in human cultures partly because they activate evolved cognitive mechanisms, for instance for finding mates (e.g., in romance fiction), exploring the world (e.g., in adventure and speculative fiction), or avoiding predators (e.g., in horror fiction). In this paper, we put forward a compreh...

To feel nervously and apprehensively “creeped out” is a familiar emotional state, but its cause—what makes something or someone “creepy”—is poorly understood. A recent evolutionary account of creepiness suggests that the emotion arises from a perceived “ambiguity about the presence of threat” (McAndrew and Koehnke 10). However, not all ambiguous th...

This article examines how vocal performances of characters can contribute to sociocritical storytelling in video games. We argue that the vocal performances of video game characters–and in particular their accents–can “fill in” the fictional story worlds of video games through associations with real people and places. These associations allow video...

This review piece covers three recent articles: Dubourg, Edgar, and Nicolas Baumard. 2022. “Why Imaginary Worlds? The Psychological Foundations and Cultural Evolution of Fictions with Imaginary Worlds.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45 (e276): 1–72. doi:10.1017/S0140525X21000923. Justus, Timothy. 2022. “Constructing Film Emotions: The Theory of...

Obscure academic writing is vague, ambiguous, jargon-filled, or otherwise difficult to interpret. Obscurantists use such writing to hide the shallowness or incoherence of their ideas. There is value in being able to see through their attempts so that one does not waste one’s time on, for example, the psychoanalytic verbiage of Jacques Lacan. Theref...

Morally flawed antiheroes in TV and film, such as Dexter Morgan and Dirty Harry, often inspire sympathetic engagement from audiences. Media scholars have argued that it is these antiheroes’ status as fictional characters that allows audiences to flout their moral principles and side with the antiheroes. Against this view, I argue that these problem...

Paradoxically, villainous characters in film, literature, and video games can be very popular. Previous research in the traditions of cognitive media theory and affective disposition theory has assumed that villainous characters can inspire positive engagement only when audiences discount the villains’ immorality by focusing on positive traits or m...

This article argues that video gaming allows for player-focused (egocentric) moral experience that can be distinguished from the other-focused (allocentric) moral experience that characterizes literature and film. Specifically, a Deweyan perspective reveals that video games afford first-personal rehearsals of moral scenarios that parallel how, in r...

One explanation for why people engage in frightening fictional experiences is that these experiences can act as simulations of actual experiences from which individuals can gather information and model possible worlds. Conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study (n = 310) tested whether past and current engagement with thematically relevant...

One explanation for why people engage in frightening fictional experiences is that these experiences can act as simulations of actual experiences from which individuals can gather information and model possible worlds. Conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study (n = 310) tested whether past and current engagement with thematically relevant...

Agency is a fundamental motive factor that subsumes competence, assertiveness, and individual goal-pursuit. It is contrasted with communion, which subsumes social and self-effacing motives. This chapter analyzes the 2016 id Software video game Doom as an agency simulator. Through narrative setup, gameplay mechanics, and audiovisual presentation, Do...

In most religious traditions, there exists the conception that human beings can lose their freedom of will to an invading consciousness. We argue that possession myths emerge from evolved mental architecture and reflect a constellation of deep-seated beliefs about cognition, consciousness, and mind−body dualism. We also consider why possession is a...

The gamer’s dilemma (Luck in Ethics Inf Technol 11(1):31–36, 2009) asks whether any ethical features distinguish virtual pedophilia, which is generally considered impermissible, from virtual murder, which is generally considered permissible. If not, this equivalence seems to force one of two conclusions: either both virtual pedophilia and virtual m...

Disney's animated villains have recently changed to show less conventionally villainous traits: They look and express themselves more like sympathetic characters, and they are usually only outed as villains late in the plot. This shift has prompted much academic commentary on the psychological and cultural significance of Disney's new villains. We...

Why would anyone want to play a game designed to scare them? We argue that an alliance between evolutionary theory and game studies can shed light on the forms and psychological functions of horror video games. Horror games invite players to simulate prototypical fear scenarios of uncertainty and danger. These scenarios challenge players to adaptiv...

https://tidsskrift.dk/lev/article/view/115491

Many narrative films feature villains, major characters that audiences are meant to condemn. This article investigates the cognitive-affective underpinnings of audience antipathy in order to shed light on how filmic villainy is constructed. To that end, the article introduces an analytical framework at the intersection of cognitive film theory and...

Moral disengagement refers to cognitive processes of misrepresenting immoral acts in order to justify them. Research on moral disengagement factors in violent video games assumes that the digital representation of violence in video games is meaningfully similar to the cognitive misrepresentation of immoral acts that defines moral disengagement. Thu...

Horror entertainment is a thriving and paradoxical industry. Who are the consumers of horror, and why do they seek out frightening media? We provide support for the threat simulation theory of horror, according to which horror media provides a form of benign masochism that offers negative emotional stimulation through simulation of threat scenarios...

The full article is available through the publisher's content sharing link: https://rdcu.be/8WeZ Please email me for a pdf copy.

This editorial offers some tips for first-year students in the Department of English at Aarhus University. It advices students to get organized, hack their habits, use the library, and write shitty first drafts.

In this editorial, I discuss the reasons why students would want to publish their academic work, as well as the benefits of publishing in Leviathan: Interdisciplinary journal in English specifically. I then introduce the articles in the first issue.

How far has the Darwinian revolution come? To what extent have evolutionary ideas penetrated into the social sciences and humanities? Are the “science wars” over? Or do whole blocs of disciplines face off over an unbridgeable epistemic gap? To answer questions like these, contributors to top journals in 22 disciplines were surveyed on their beliefs...

This article investigates the nature and appeal of morally ambiguous protagonists, or anti-heroes, through an evolutionary lens. It argues that morally ambiguous protagonists navigate conflicts between prosocial and antisocial motivational pulls. In so doing they present audiences with a window onto the conflicts inherent in human sociality. Workin...

How far has the Darwinian revolution come? To what extent have evolutionary ideas penetrated into the social sciences and humanities? Are the “science wars” over? Or do whole blocs of disciplines face off over an unbridgeable epistemic gap? To answer questions like these, contributors to top journals in 22 disciplines were surveyed on their beliefs...

This article argues that the sciences of mind can inform analyses of narrative characters, including their motives, appearances, and other traits. In particular, it explores the popcultural villain through the lenses of evolutionary and social psychology. Evolutionary psychology supplies a basic blueprint for impactful villains: they are selfish, e...