Suspense, curiosity, and surprise: How discourse structure influences the affective and cognitive processing of a story

The structural affect theory (Brewer and Lichtenstein, 1982) states that different affective responses can be evoked by manipulating the order in which a story's events are narrated. Suspense is evoked by postponing the story's outcome, curiosity is evoked by presenting the outcome before the preceding events, and surprise is evoked by an unexpected event. Apart from evoking different affective responses, the manipulation of the event order can influence the cognitive processing as well. In this paper, an experiment si described in which the affective and cognitive effects of suspense, curiosity, and surprise structures are studied using a story by a professional author. The results showed that suspense can be evoked even when readers know how the story will end. The inclusion of a surprising event is highly appreciated. Furthermore, it leads to a better representation of the story's events, as was predicted by Kintsch (1980).