Attachment Film, Emotion, and Cognition

Attachment Film, Emotion, and Cognition is a bold intervention that seeks to center the bodily and affective dimensions of film traditionally regarded as "feminine". The author uses attachment theory in an interdisciplinary framework with an emphasis on biology and a species-based understanding of pro-social behavior to approach films about attachment motivations. By blending affective and cognitive neuroscience research with tendencies deeply embedded in the humanities, this book makes a major contribution to the field of cognitive film theory. The focus on attachment theory also makes a meta-generic address via its focus on romance and melodrama that makes it useful for other narratives that overlap affective and generic boundaries. The book presents a model of attachment-film experiences with its inbuilt shifts in affective and cognitive regulative processes and makes an ambitious case for how engagement with attachment film viewing can be understood from both a universal and an individual perspective.

Mette Kramer is a Danish scholar in film studies and cognitive psychology. She earned a PhD in film studies and cognitive and emotion psychology and has written on emotion, cognition, and film in a number of articles. She is the co-author of Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film (2018) and is working on an edited volume on shame and spectatorship.

Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Emotion in the Attachment Film 2. Attachment, Perception, and Emotion 3. Attachment Theory, the Narrative Structure of Melodrama, and the Role of Emotional Regulation 4. Character Engagement: "The Scene of Empathy" in the Attachment Film and its Aesthetics 5. The Interaction of Affective-Motivational and Cognitive States State Transitions and Regulation in Engagement with Attachment Films 6. The Pleasure of Experiencing Positive and Negative Attachment Scenarios References Notes Index