The present literature review investigated how pleasure induced by music and visual-art has been conceptually understood in empirical research over the past 20 years. After an initial selection of abstracts from seven databases (keywords: pleasure, reward, enjoyment, and hedonic), twenty music and eleven visual-art papers were systematically compared. The following questions were addressed: (1)...

Many laboratory experiments show that people are often altruistic or care for fairness. We present data that reveal a darker side of human nature. We introduce the joy-of-destruction game. Two players each receive an endowment and simultaneously decide on how much of the other player’s endowment to destroy. Subjects play this game repeatedly. In one treatment, subjects can hide their destructio...

BACKGROUND This study explores the role of pleasure in decision making. RESULTS In Experiment 1, 12 subjects were presented with a questionnaire containing 46 items taken from the literature. Twenty-three items described a situation where a decision should be made and ended with a suggested solution. The other items served as filler items. The subjects were requested not to make a decision bu...

The relationship between aggression, pleasure and decision-making is analyzed applying a mediation model of structural equation modeling (SEM). The study explored it in two samples of similar age: young offenders and university students. A close relationship between aggression and pleasure was found in both populations. But, whereas in the case of university students, this congruence leads to a...

This paper describes a study incorporating sociopleasure elements in digital storybook. This paper aims at demonstrating the incorporation of the aspects of socio-pleasure as suggested by the THE Medium model into the digital storybook. First, the THE Medium model is adapted in determining the aspects of socio-pleasure. Having identified the aspects, a storybook was designed and developed. Then...

Modern science begins to understand pleasure as a potential component of salutogenesis. Thereby, pleasure is described as a state or feeling of happiness and satisfaction resulting from an experience that one enjoys. We examine the neurobiological factors underlying reward processes and pleasure phenomena. Further, health implications related to pleasurable activities are analyzed. With regard ...

INTRODUCTION Anhedonia is defined as a diminished capacity to experience pleasant emotion and is commonly included among the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. However, if patients report experiencing a lower level of pleasure than controls, they report experiencing as much pleasure as controls with online measurements of emotion. OBJECTIVE The Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS) me...

This study introduces the Children’s Scales of Pleasure and Arousal as instruments to enable children to provide subjective and descriptive judgments along the major dimensions of affect. Children (N = 160, 3 to 11 years), and an adult comparison group (N = 20), used the scales to indicate the levels of pleasure or arousal they perceived in stylized drawings of facial expressions. All age group...

BACKGROUND Listening to music is amongst the most rewarding experiences for humans. Music has no functional resemblance to other rewarding stimuli, and has no demonstrated biological value, yet individuals continue listening to music for pleasure. It has been suggested that the pleasurable aspects of music listening are related to a change in emotional arousal, although this link has not been d...