cases the invisible spot would have nothing important to hide, the potential
implications of ignoring a disturbance or affordance are too great to warrant saving a
little bit of energy by not “looking around the corner”. That is why, as Loewenstein
[1994] observes, the feeling of curiosity elicited by a mystery tends to be intense and
difficult to resist, but short-lived and with a tendency to disappoint once the missing
information has come in.
Mystery is a core feature of adventure and its expression in novels, tales and
others forms of narrative [Cawelti, 1976], where it functions as a powerful device to
capture the attention of the audience. In film and literature, the most popular
instantiation of this device can be found in the genre known as a “murder mystery”,
“detective story”, or “whodunit”. Here, the mystery in question is a crime whose
perpetrator needs to be discovered on the basis of various clues [Knobloch-
Westerwick & Keplinger 2006]. The narrator starts by producing a description of the
settings, people involved and their relationships, thus creating a detailed prospect of
the environment in which the crime is going to occur. However, when then one of the
protagonists gets killed, and it is not obvious how or why that happened, the
remaining characters (and with them the readers) become aware of a potentially fatal
gap in their knowledge that demands resolution. The rest of the story will provide a
gradual filling in of that gap as new facts are revealed one by one, thus keeping the
reader on alert for any potentially important clue.
A closely related genre is a thriller or suspense story. Suspense is a more
limited form of mystery, where the outcome (e.g. an attack by the killer, or an escape
from the burning building) can in general be anticipated, but where the precise timing
and circumstances of that outcome remain unknown [Knobloch, 2003]. The effort
demanded to get that knowledge is patience and attention to any clue, however
insignificant it may seem, in order to process it as quickly as possible in order to
resolve the mystery in time for the danger to be averted. Thus, suspense is an effective
method to create and sustain the focused excitement that we characterized as the
fundamental “readiness for action” [Frijda et al., 1989; Frijda, 2007] that underlies the
emotions necessary to live through an adventure.
Anticipation of Mystery
A more subtle emotion results from third-order anticipation: the anticipation of
mystery. It is difficult to find a simple term to capture this feeling. Perhaps closest in
meaning is the Dutch “weemoed”, which is usually translated as “melancholy”, but is
closer to a kind of longing for something indeterminate, or nostalgia for something as
yet unknown. In English, the closest term may be wistfulness, but without its
connotation of pensiveness. Literary examples of the sentiment are readily found in
the genre of magical realism [Zamora & Faris, 1995], which may be exemplified by
authors such as Franz Kafka, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Haruki Murakami. Stories
in this genre typically describe ordinary, realistic courses of action that are gradually
mixed up with strange, seemingly inexplicable events and coincidences—as if some
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