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 01/2020 | Lecturer, Helmut-Schmidt-Universität, Hamburg, Germany |
| since 01/2020 | Visiting Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany |
| 10/2013–12./2020 | 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
Articles (in peer-reviewed journals)
Scharinger, M., Knoop, C. A., Wagner, V., & Menninghaus, W. (2022). Neural processing of poems and songs is based on melodic properties. Neuroimage, 257, Article 119310. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119310
Scharinger, M., Wagner, V., Knoop, C. A., & Menninghaus, W. (2022). Melody in poems and songs: Fundamental statistical properties predict aesthetic evaluation. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Advance online publication. doi:10.1037/aca0000465
Salgaro, M., Wagner, V., & Menninghaus, W. (2021). A good, a bad, and an evil character: Who renders a novel most enjoyable? Poetics, 87, Article 101550. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2021.101550
Beermann, U., Hosoya, G., Schindler, I., Scherer, K. R., Eid, M., Wagner, V., & Menninghaus, W. (2021). Dimensions and Clusters of Aesthetic Emotions: A Semantic Profile Analysis. Frontiers in Psychology,12, Article 667173. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.667173
Wagner, V., Scharinger, M., Knoop, C. A., & Menninghaus, W. (2021). Effects of continuous self-reporting on aesthetic evaluation and emotional responses. Poetics, 85, Article 101497. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2020.101497
Tavano, A., Blohm, S., Knoop, C. A., Muralikrishnan, R., Scharinger, M., Wagner, V., et al. (2020). Neural harmonics reflect grammaticality. bioRxiv - The Preprint Server for Biology, Preprint. Retrieved from Neural harmonics reflect grammaticality | bioRxiv
Menninghaus, W., Schindler, I., Wagner, V., Wassiliwizky, E., Hanich, J., Jacobsen, T., et al. (2020). Aesthetic Emotions Are a Key Factor in Aesthetic Evaluation: Reply to Skov and Nadal (2020).Psychological Review, 127(4), 650–654. doi:10.1037/rev0000213.
Menninghaus, W., Wagner, V., Kegel, V., Knoop, C. A., & Schlotz, W. (2019). Beauty, elegance, grace, and sexiness compared. Plos One, 14(6), Article e0218728. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0218728
Menninghaus, W., Wagner, V., Wassiliwizky, E., Schindler, I., Hanich, J., Jacobsen, T., & Koelsch, S. (2019). What are aesthetic emotions? Psychological Review, 126(2), 171–195. doi:10.1037/rev0000135
Menninghaus, W., Wagner, V., Knoop, C. A., & Scharinger, M. (2018). Poetic speech melody: A crucial link between music and language. Plos One, 13(11), e0205980. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0205980
Blohm, S., Wagner, V., Schlesewsky, M., & Menninghaus, W. (2018). Sentence judgments and the grammar of poetry: Linking linguistic structure and poetic effect. Poetics, 69, 41–56. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2018.04.005
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, Article e380. 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, Article 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
Schindler, I., Hosoya, G., Menninghaus, W., Beermann, U., Wagner, V., Eid, M., & Scherer, K. R. (2017). Measuring aesthetic emotions: A review of the literature and a new assessment tool. Plos One, 12(6), Article e0178899. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0178899
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, 10(2), 134–146. 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), Article 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, Article 1242. 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 ...