Psychical Distance Research Articles

Collective Rituals in Times of the COVID-19 Quarantine: The Relationship between Collective Applause and Identity Fusion

Several initiatives are arising to counterbalance the consequences of psychical distance, motivated by COVID-19, by reinforcing social ties. In this project, we focus on analyzing the relationships between participating in collective applause (i.e., a collective ritual), reinforcement of collective/relational ties, identity fusion, and compliance with quarantine norms. We carried out a study during the COVID-19 quarantine (N = 568) with people who were legally obliged to stay home. Our results indicate that participating in collective rituals relates to collective and relational ties with in-group members. This, in turn, is associated with the strength of identity fusion and the perception that other in-group members comply with quarantine norms. Thus, under the influence of a common fate that invariably threatens the lives of a large part of the population, participating in collective rituals positively relates to an increase in the sense of belonging and common identity. © 2021 Institute of Experimental Psychology, Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Revealing Revelation: Hans Haacke’s “All Connected”

Revealing Revelation: Hans Haacke’s “All Connected”

공익연계 마케팅 대상에 대한 심리적 거리와 국가(한·중)가 브랜드 태도에 미치는 영향: 브랜드 인지도를 중심으로

본 연구는 기업의 공익연계마케팅 대상에 대한 심리적 거리와 소비자 태도를 브랜드 인지도와 한국, 중국을 중심으로 살펴보았다. 분석결과, 첫째, 공익연계 마케팅에 대한 브랜드 태도는 공익연계 마케팅 대상과 심리적 거리가 먼 경우보다 공익연계 마케팅 대상과 심리적 거리가 가까운 경우 더욱 더 긍정적으로 나타났다. 둘째, 공익연계 마케팅 대상과 심리적 거리 따른 브랜드 태도는 한국 소비자와 중국 소비자에 따라 달랐다. 셋째, 공익연계 마케팅 대상과 심리적 거리 따른 브랜드 태도는 브랜드 인지도에 따라 달랐다. 마지막으로, 공익연계 마케팅 전략의 수립에 도움이 되는 이론적, 실무적 시사점을 제공하여 보고자 한다.

A prison audience: women prisoners, Shakespeare and spectatorship

ABSTRACTIn 2017 the Donmar Warehouse presented The Tempest to women prisoners at HMP New Hall, UK. The production was part of a trilogy of Shakespeare plays directed by Phyllida Lloyd, each staged with an all-female cast and each set within a women’s prison. Over the five years of developing this trilogy the Donmar undertook extensive research and development into the prison context, including in collaboration with York St John University’s Prison Partnership Project. This paper explores the prison audiences’ experiences of The Tempest, examining how they responded to seeing their own lived experiences on stage, filtered through the prism of Shakespearian plot, characterisation and language. In particular, this paper focuses on moments of identification, where the women found direct resonance and self-recognition with the characters and experiences in The Tempest. At the same time it draws on discourses from dramatherapy and aesthetic theory to argue for the importance of various forms of emotional, empathetic and psychical distance. Using close analysis of the spectators’ responses, it describes how for the prison audience the result was an oscillation between identification and distance, a reading of “me but more than me” that produced a powerful affective and reflective impact.

Psychical distance in the internationalisation process of micro and small enterprises

Despite the development of new technologies and “flattening of the world”, psychical distance is a relevant factor in the internationalisation process of micro and small enterprises. This article indicates the importance of psychical distance in the internationalisation process of activities performed by companies of the SME sector, with particular focus put on micro and small enterprises. The multidimensional nature of the concept of distance in the internationalisation process was presented using the CAGE model (cultural, administrative, geographical, economic). The article discusses the concept of psychical distance and stage internationalisation theory in the context of the fundamental Uppsala model. Moreover, the article indicates risk categories of international operations and its impact on the scale of psychical distance in the internationalization of activities.

Effects of avatar character performances in virtual reality dramas used for teachers’ education

ABSTRACTVirtual reality drama has the benefit of enhancing immersion, which was lacking in original e-Learning systems. Moreover, dangerous and expensive educational content can be replaced by stimulating users’ interest. In this study, we investigate the effects of avatar performance in virtual reality drama. The hypothesis that the psychical distance between virtual characters and their viewers changes according to the size of video shots is tested with an autonomic nervous system function test. Eighty-four college students were randomly assigned to three groups. Virtual reality drama is used to train teachers concerning school bullying prevention, and deals with the dialogue between teachers and students. Group 1 was provided with full-shot video clips, Group 2 was shown various clips from full shots to extreme close-ups, and Group 3 was provided with close-up shots. We found that the virtual reality drama viewers’ levels of stimulation changed in relation to the size of the shots. The R-R (between P wave and P wave) intervals of the electrocardiograms (ECGs, bio-signal feedback) became significantly narrower as the shot size became smaller.

Audience real-time bio-signal-processing-based computational intelligence model for narrative scene editing

Narrative scene editing is carried out by directors as an eidetic technique. Continuity editing is a style of editing used in film making to make films as realistic as possible for the audience. While non-continuity editing (e.g., flashbacks, jump cuts, montages, etc.) is also a critical factor that reflects the character of a director, most scenes demand continuity editing to maximize the audience’s narrative immersion. In this paper, we present an algorithm for continuity editing that determines the size of a shot (field of view) by evaluating the psychical distance between the characters and viewers via the measurement of electrodermal activity (or the galvanic skin response). The use of this continuity editing algorithm is expected to result in more audience-friendly videos by reflecting the level of identification between the actors and the audience.

Institutional Changes in Contemporary Theatre

Current processes in international theatre practice have been so different in artistic sense that they could hardly be combined in some unity. But there is anothercriterion, not purely artistic, according to which artistically different phenomena of contemporary theatre could be united in wholeness. It is an institutional kind of criterion. Contemporary state of theatre as a kind of art could not be clearly described and then productively investigated without interpretation of those strong and deep transformations that have happened to theatre as a kind of societal institution. The thing is that researchers usually do observe artistic and societal qualities of art separately. Of course, it is one of the results of knowledge coming into depth and getting specialized, but sometimes it seems as if in development of art there were two divided processes – artistic, on the one hand, and societal, on the other hand. In reality, this development is one and whole total process with many various aspects. To keep in mind the unity of artistic and societal transformations of theatrical art is the challenge for methodological discourse within any aesthetic investigation in this field. Institutional theory of art, according to the author’s point of view, is the very case of methodological attitude that allows a researcher stay realistic in relation to the abovementioned unity. There is the key point that demonstrates it – the approach of the institutional theory of art to the problem of psychical distance between performance and spectators, its historical institutionalization in the phenomenon of classical and the following changes within this institutional state that finally brought theatre from classical to non-classical aesthetic regime. Institutional theory looks at this transition as artistic in the inspiriting causes, but societal is focused on fixation of their results. So, this theory allows an aesthetic observer keep the balance on the blade of the artistic and the societal contents of the institutional state of contemporary theatre. This article is the author’s attempt to point out the most significant institutional changes in contemporary theatre.

Reply to Andriy Vasylchenko’s Review of Formal Ontology and Conceptual Realism

Adriy Vasylchenko makes the interesting observation that our references are frequently emotionally charged. A comprehensive theory of reference, Vasylchenko suggests, should include an account of this phenomenon. We agree. Indeed, as we will see, the theory of reference in conceptual realism can be used to explain an important feature of our emotional states when we read a novel, or watch a play, a movie, or even when viewing a painting. This feature, which in aesthetics is called psychical distance, is connected in part with the difference between active and deactivated reference in conceptual realism. We will take up that issue at the end this reply. There is, however, an important misunderstanding in Vasylchenko’s review of how the notion of existential presupposition applies—or, as he claims, fails to apply—to fictional objects and more generally to the abstract intensional objects of conceptual realism. We will discuss this latter issue first, and then turn to the issue of our emotional states and psychical distance when reading fiction or watching a play or a film, and perhaps even when having an aesthetic experience in general.

Janet Staab on Philosophical Coaching as Engaged Pedagogy

In this essay, I critically analyze Janet Staab’s view of engaged pedagogy, as a basis for philosophical coaching. I argue that Staab’s approach fails to address two major issues faced by counselors within a counseling context. First, Staab’s position does not appreciate the need for an appropriate psychical distance between coach and client, one needed to understand the client’s problems. Second, although Staab addresses the need to handle conflicts that may arise between coach and client, her viewpoint does not recognize the value of how it is possible to empower the client even if the choices and outlooks of the client clash with the coach’s own values.

The Evolution of Psychical Distance As an Aesthetic Concept

The problem of psychical distance refers to the relationship that a person has with an aesthetic object or work. Two basic traditions can be distinguished that have played a meaningful role in describing the underlying processes. The British Empiricist and Enlightenment traditions established the idea that the ‘real’ objective properties of aesthetic works engage viewers and evoke feelings of pleasure. The Romantic tradition placed a greater emphasis on interpretive activity in recipients who ‘willingly suspend disbelief’ and temporarily enter the ‘fictive’ worlds of poetry and drama. Writing in the early 20th century, Edward Bullough produced the idea of ‘psychical distance’, which combines both personal involvement and an awareness that the object or event is a cultural artifact. As the 20th century unfolds, we witness the death of the ‘aesthetic object’ as such and the emergence of a view that accommodates artists, aesthetic artifacts and receivers as open-ended and interacting systems. The complementary role of the realist and constructivist viewpoints is emphasized.

The Evolution of Psychical Distance as an Aesthetic Concept

The Evolution of Psychical Distance as an Aesthetic Concept

Aesthetic Experience in Constructivist Museums

Psychical Distance is dead, and Significant Form is in hiding.1 Not that many people care about such arcane aesthetic concepts anymore. This is an era of constructivist meaning-making, dynamic human engagement, and in-yourface social relevance. For American art museums it is a vertiginous period of conflicting goals and identity crises. As interpreters of culture, art museums have had to face tidal waves of revisionist history, postmodern narratives, political correctness, and critical and contextual zealots. As authenticobject oriented institutions, art museums must struggle to remain viable in a techno-culture where virtual worlds proliferate and the veracity of reproduction technology has connoisseurs doing double-takes. As exhibition-oriented institutions, art museums compete with the entertainment industry's special effects teams who continue to up the ante in order to capture a jaded public's attention. As educational institutions, art museums puzzle over how to provide active learning opportunities in an essentially passive hands-off environment. The term paradigm shift has been leveraged so often in attempts to explain the state of art museums that the phrase has become passe. What has become of aesthetic experience amid all the confusion? In the galleries and passageways of art museums aesthetic experience is still referred to with a sense of sacred commitment. And like many things sacred, the concept of aesthetic experience remains largely enshrouded by a mysterious veil of ambiguity. Traditionally it has been taken on faith that people who love art should be left alone to love the artworks, and that the quality of the museum experience will be high provided that the quality of the artwork is high. Unfortunately, the assumption has proved unreliable, that if museum visitors are given sufficient exposure to high quality art, they are inevitably swept up in the indescribable epiphany of an aesthetic experience

The Psychical Aesthetic Distance of Pornographic Apprehension

The Psychical Aesthetic Distance of Pornographic Apprehension

Psychical Distance and Counseling

Psychical Distance and Counseling

Psychical Distance and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Wilderness

Psychical Distance and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Wilderness

Double-Distancing: An Attribute of the "Post-Modern" Avant-Garde

In his classic essay 'Psychical Distance' as a Factor in Art and as an Aesthetic Principle, 1 Edward Bullough described the operation of distance as the quality through which expression achieves aesthetic validity: Distancing means the separation of personal affections, whether idea or complex experience, from the concrete personality of the experience. 2 He also coined the terms over-distanced (e.g. melodrama for the sophisticated) and under-distanced (e.g. melodrama for the un-sophisticated) to describe a quality in unaesthetic work. Consciously or not, Bullough himself was responding to what have come to be known as Modernist works, reacting to modernist procedures at about the same time James Joyce was trying to explain modes of perceiving within the modernist optic. During the post-Flaubertian post-Jamesian early 20th century, Joyce's view, like Bullough's, was characteristically fresh but on its way to becoming scrupulously orthodox. In his frequently misunderstood theory of distance, Joyce distinguished crudely but effectively between and static art: feelings excited by improper art are kinetic, desire and Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. The arts which excite them are improper arts. The aesthetic emotion (I use the general term) is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing. 3 Neglecting over-distancing, Joyce is describing attributes of under-distancing and enunciating Bullough's requirements for a work of art. We may proceed from there to describe certain contemporary works which, while seemingly breaking Bullough's rules and bending Joyce's, are still both static and properly distanced. Conventional modernism is characterized by fine-tuned and delicately balanced ironic productions which make the kinetic virtually impossible as a response by embodying motion in the artifact and refusing both definition and conclusion. Empathy and even antipathy are not banished from modernist texts where it is possible, even desirable, for the implied reader to discover himself and momentarily identify with the persona's predicament. For this seeming violation or imbalance to be viable, however, the text must impose an extra measure of distance by such means as humor, irony, symbolism and allegory. It is through irony in fact that distance is most readily achieved, through a device, that is,

The Truth about Psychical Distance

The Truth about Psychical Distance

F. H. Bradley on Censorship and Psychical Distance

F. H. Bradley on Censorship and Psychical Distance

Psychical Distance and Theatrical Distancing in Sartre's Drama

Psychical Distance and Theatrical Distancing in Sartre's Drama