There is ample evidence to suggest that positive emotions lead to valuable life outcomes. This study examines daily positive emotion development before, during, and after a leisure travel experience. The study measured positive emotions on a daily basis in 25 mature adult participants before, during, and after two leisure travel experiences. Consistent with the "peak" model in previous research, positive emotions overall-and joy and interest in particular-increased before leisure travel, were elevated during travel, and declined afterward. Implications for practice include managing positive emotions before and after leisure travel. Future research should consider positive emotions in other populations and other leisure experiences.
LINK
Studies have suggested that positive emotions may occur in mature adult tourists' experiences, but the processes linking participants' social contexts and positive emotions are unknown. The study used an interpretive ethnographic approach with participant observation and conversations with key informants to document positive emotions in two mature adult tourism experiences, an educational tour of a Civil War battlefield and a model airplane contest. Interpretive thematic analysis revealed amusement from humor, warmth of friendship, interest in activities, and sublime reactions to loss. These processes explain how participants' social contexts produced positive emotions, and why particular emotions occurred. Furthermore, findings show the importance of positive emotions to building a sense of community among participants, fostering regular repeat participation.
LINK
Visits to sites associated with death and suffering are considered emotionally laden. Few studies empirically investigated visitor emotions at such sites. This study examines emotional responses of 241 visitors to concentration camp memorial Neuengamme and assesses how emotions are associated with long-term consequences of revisit intentions and positive word of mouth. Tourists experience negative emotions more intensely compared with positive emotions. Negative emotions predict long-term behavioral intentions more than positive emotions do. Shock and sadness are of particular importance. This study suggests that certain negative emotions also have the power to broaden-and-build and may have long-term behavioral consequences.
LINK
In 2007 at Ropecon, a large Finnish roleplaying convention, Emily Care Boss coined the term bleed to refer to emotional transference that sometimes happened to players of roleplaying games. Bleed describes an effect where emotions and attitudes experienced while roleplaying a character continue on after the roleplaying session was over, or the other way around, where a player brings their own feelings into the character they are embodying. For example, a player would roleplay a romance with another player's character, and then develop feelings for said player after the game was over. Bleed can create powerful effects in a roleplaying session, both positive and negative, which has resulted in the development of various best practices and safety tools that analogue game designers can draw upon, and roleplaying games frequently have mechanics designed around inducing and maximizing particular types of bleed in their players. Bleed mechanics lend themselves particularly well to exploring queer and otherwise marginalized identities, generating empathy, and exploring acts of political resistance. They are a powerful tool in the analogue game designers’ toolbox. Digital games make comparatively far less use of bleed in their designs than analogue games—the concept of bleed is not well-known among digital game designers. Consequently, there is little guidance for designing digital bleed mechanics, and insufficient safety tools with which to do so. With how powerful these effects can be, the knowledge and tools gaps for digital games needs addressing. This research project will create primarily digital narrative games that are explicitly designed to invoke bleed, and seeks to provide designers with new frameworks and safety tools to create bleed effects for digital games. Games will be created with varying themes and approaches regarding identity and storytelling to explore how, in particular, narrative design influences bleed in digital games.
