Dr. Valentin Wagner

Research Interests

Aesthetics of language and speech
Aesthetic emotions
Visual aesthetics
Language processing and language production

Vita

Academic Education

11/2008	Dr. rer. nat. Psychology, University of Leipzig, Germany
2005-2008	Research Training Group "Function of Attention in Cognition", University of Leipzig, Germany
1998-2005	Study in Psychology, University of Leipzig, Germany
03/2002	Magister Artium in Philosophy, University of Leipzig, Germany
1995-2002	Studies in Philosophy, Psychology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig, Germany
Professional Experience
Since 10/2013	Senior Research Fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
2012-2013	Senior Research Fellow at the Cluster 'Languages of Emotion', Project "Touching, moving, stirring", Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
2009-2012	Senior Research Fellow at the Cluster 'Languages of Emotion', Project "Aesthetic modulation of affective valence", Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
2008	Research Fellow at the Institute for Psychology I, University of Leipzig, Germany

Publications

Journal Articles

Blohm, S., Wagner, V., Schlesewsky, M., & Mennighaus, W. (in press). Sentence judgments and the grammar of poetry: Linking linguistic structure and poetic effect. Poetics

Menninghaus, W., Wagner, V., Hanich, J., Wassiliwizky, E., Jacobsen, T., & Koelsch, S. (2017). Authors’ Response: Negative emotions in art reception: Refining theoretical assumptions and adding variables to the Distancing-Embracing model. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40, 44-51, e380. doi: doi:10.1017/S0140525X17001947

Menninghaus, W., Wagner, V., Hanich, J., Wassiliwizky, E., Jacobsen, T., & Koelsch, S. (2017). The Distancing-Embracing model of the enjoyment of negative emotions in art reception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40, e347. doi:10.1017/S0140525X17000309

Hosoya, G., Schindler, I., Beermann, U., Wagner, V., Menninghaus, W., Eid, M., & Scherer, K. (2017). Mapping the Conceptual Domain of Aesthetic Emotion Terms: A Pile-Sort Study. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 11(4), 457-473. doi:10.1037/aca0000123

Wassiliwizky, E., Koelsch, S., Wagner, V., Jacobsen, T., & Menninghaus, W. (2017). The emotional power of poetry: Neural circuitry, psychophysiology and compositional principles. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(8), 1229-1240. doi:10.1093/scan/nsx069

Menninghaus, W., Wagner, V., Wassiliwizky, E., Jacobsen, T., & Knoop, C. A. (2017). The emotional and aesthetic powers of parallelistic diction. Poetics, 63, 47-59. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2016.12.001

Knoop, C. A., Wagner, V., Jacobsen, T., & Menninghaus, W. (2016). Mapping the aesthetic space of literature from "below". Poetics, 56, 35-49. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2016.02.001

Wagner, V., Klein, J., Hanich, J., Shah, M., Menninghaus, W., & Jacobsen, T. (2016). Anger Framed: A Field Study on Emotion, Pleasure, and Art. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, No Pagination Specified. doi:10.1037/aca0000029

Wassiliwizky, E., Wagner, V., Jacobsen, T., & Menninghaus, W. (2015). Art-elicited chills indicate states of being moved. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 9(4), 405-416. doi:10.1037/aca0000023

Menninghaus, W., Wagner, V., Hanich, J., Wassiliwizky, E., Kuehnast, M., & Jacobsen, T. (2015). Towards a Psychological Construct of Being Moved. Plos One, 10(6), e0128451. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0128451

Kuehnast, M., Wagner, V., Wassiliwizky, E., Jacobsen, T., & Menninghaus, W. (2014). Being Moved: Linguistic Representation and Conceptual Structure. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01242 PDF

Hanich, J., Wagner, V., Shah, M., Jacobsen, T., & Menninghaus, W. (2014). Why we like to watch sad films. The pleasure of being moved in aesthetic experiences. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8(2), 130–143. doi:10.1037/a0035690

Wagner, V., Menninghaus, W., Hanich, J., & Jacobsen, T. (2014). Art schema effects on affective experience: The case of disgusting images. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8(2), 120–129. doi:10.1037/a0036126

Wagner, V., Jescheniak, J. D., & Schriefers, H. (2010). On the flexibility of grammatical advance planning during sentence production: Effects of cognitive load on multiple lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(2), 423–440. doi:10.1037/a0018619

Jescheniak, J. D., Oppermann, F., Hantsch, A., Wagner, V., Mädebach, A., & Schriefers, H. (2009). Do Perceived Context Pictures Automatically Activate Their Phonological Code? Experimental Psychology, 56(1), 56–65. doi:10.1027/1618-3169.56.1.56

Jescheniak, J. D., Hahne, A., Hoffmann, S., & Wagner, V. (2006). Phonological activation of category coordinates during speech planning is observable in children but not in adults: Evidence for cascaded processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32(2), 373–386. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.32.3.373

Projects

Elegance
This project focuses on the cognitive and affective implications of elegance, the range of phenomena that have the potential to be elegant, and the aesthetic and phenomenological qualia of (experiencing) elegance. Moreover, it investigates ...
Developing an "Aesthetic Emotions Scale" (AESTHEMOS)
A theoretical construct of "Aesthetic Emotions" is useful for empirical research only to the extent that methods for measuring actually felt aesthetic emotions are developed. The project undertakes this effort: it develops highly nuanced ...
Behavioral, physiological and neural substrates of parallelistic diction
In a series of studies we investigate the behavioral and physiological effects as well as the neural substrates of the numerous features of parallelistic diction (such as alliteration, meter, anaphora, and many others), as used in poetry, proverbs, ...
Lyrical speech melody
Since antiquity, poets have been likened to singers. The Romantic understanding of poetry has further reinforced the analogies between music and poetry. Our project investigates the extent to which this analogy can be pushed beyond meter and rhyme to ...

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