ABSTRACT
Why do humans devote so much of their time and energy to the media and bring such enormous resources to bear making up and telling stories? They go to the movies, watch television, listen to the radio, and read books and comics. Even in societies with little or no access to mass media people spend countless hours listening to and telling stories, singing and dancing together, acting out and laughing together over fi ctional events (cf. Konijn this volume). The emotional involvement in such stories is often as intense as that of real events. The perception of anger, sorrow, fear, and hate, not to mention pleasure and joy, is immediate and direct. It would appear that an essential function of the mediation of real and fi ctional stories is the generation of this emotional component. Medially mediated entertainment, having no other apparent purpose than amusement, is seemingly dysfunctional in nature, as it prevents people from attending to presumably more important things in life. The function of emotion in the perception of media is therefore essential for an understanding of media and the role of media in society today.
