Compensating for Emotioncy Gaps in Real Life: The Role of Narratives in Virtual Emotionalization

Inspired by developmental individual-differences relationship-based studies, and rooted in embodied cognition research program, emotioncy emerged as a new notion in psychology explicating the way sense-induced emotions can relativize one’s cognition. Individuals’ understanding of the world is assumed to be shaped according to their emotioncy levels. Individuals can be considered avolved (null emotioncy), exvolved (auditory, visual, and kinesthetic emotioncies), or involved (inner and arch emotioncies) toward a certain concept or situation. The notion has been widely applied to a range of topics in language education, psychology, and social studies. It was hypothesized that as a result of an increase in individuals’ emotioncy levels, their conceptions of reality become more realistic, empathy increases, and biased beliefs decrease. In order to have better perceptions, individuals are encouraged to get involved and to move toward the end of the emotioncy spectrum. However, gaining personal experiences and going beyond that (achieving inner and arch emotioncies), is not possible for some situations/concepts. Therefore, there should be a compensatory mechanism to get involved in those situations/concepts which their involvement is not physically possible and to increase emotioncy levels. Narratives are assumed to have the potential of being the intermediary link in filling the emotioncy gaps individuals suffer in some cases when actual involvement is not possible. Using narrative transportation theory, this study seeks to explain the crucial role of narratives in virtual emotionalization where actual emotionalization is not possible. In the end, the applications of the introduced notion are discussed briefly in a range of domains.