Film/TV Books Online: Cognitivism Emotion and the Sructure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine by Ed S. Tan Published in 1996 by Lawrence Erlbaum. Tan is a Dutch psychologist who provides an empirical psychological account of our emotional responses to film viewing. He discusses film as an effective and well-crafted "emotion machine" that uses specific devices to produce particular results in fairly orderly and predictable ways. Among other subjects he discusses are the general emotion of "interest" (what keeps us involved enough to follow the plot) and empathy.

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