‘The paradox of negative emotions’. According to the paradox, it is puzzling that people should show the interest they do in undergoing the experience of watching the latest splatter film or looking at St Thomas inserting his finger into one of the resurrected Jesus’s wounds in Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of St Thomas. In both cases a disgusting subject matter is capable of affording an experience that one might have reasons to value and many will seek; this seems puzzling, almost paradoxical, given the unpleasantness typically felt when encountering something disgusting in real life.