Pupil Dilation Reflects Emotional Arousal Via Poetic Language.

ABSTRACT: We investigated pupillary responses to the world's shortest fixed verses, Japanese haiku as aesthetic poetry (AP) and senryu as comic poetry (CP), in comparison with non-poetry control stimuli (NP) comprised of slogans that had the same rhythm patterns. Native Japanese speakers without literary training listened to these stimuli while we recorded their pupil diameters. We found that participants' pupils were significantly dilated for CP compared to NP in an early time window. While AP also evoked larger dilations than NP, the latency for AP-related pupil dilation was relatively long. Thus, lay people experience quick and intense arousal in response to funny and humorous words, while aesthetic properties of words may also elicit intense but slower changes in listeners' arousal

SUBMITTER: Niikuni K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9947723 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature