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When Zillmann and Bryant (1986) described entertainment as “any activity designed to delight and, to a smaller degree, enlighten through the exhibition of the fortunes or misfortunes of others,” they provided a broad and “crudely”[sic] defined concept for early media scholars (p. 303). Since then, media psychologists have struggled to agree on the meaning of several key concepts in entertainment theory. Among these, few have received as much attention as enjoyment and appreciation. Entertainment researchers have been particularly interested in the distinction between these two audience experiences, often concentrating on how this might inform questions about dysphoric media appeal. Most early research on media “enjoyment” focused only on experiences of pleasure (see Eden, 2017). The drawbacks imposed by this limited construal, and the need for greater conceptual clarity, was apparent even to pioneers in entertainment research, who pointed to the “paradoxical attraction of seemingly negative material, such as being entertained by suspense and puzzles, by horror shows, by tragedies and tear-jerkers”(Tannenbaum, 1980, p. 7). Despite efforts by scholars working in this area, ambiguity in entertainment theory’s characterization of enjoyment and appreciation remains. In particular, such conceptions lack a clear description of both the mechanisms that underlie these appraisals and the content features that may distinguish their prediction. Our chapter attempts to address some of these concerns by introducing the narrative enjoyment and appreciation rationale (NEAR) and its description of how the salience of conflicting intuitive …