Today.Az » Weird / Interesting » Why sad songs make us happy?
16 July 2013 [09:50] - Today.Az
Even though listening to sad songs should leave us feeling terrible, we
have a tendency to actually kind of like them. Case in point: A 2008
study found that minor-key music sounded sadder than major-key music to
people, but that people found it more likable.
Well, a group of
Japanese researchers just got paid to figure out why we enjoy crying it
out with Adele over her broken heart so much. It's not just
masochism--although we understand that the song is supposed to evoke
sadness, we end up feeling more positive or ambivalent emotions in
response.
In a study of 44 people, participants listened to one
of three lesser-known classical pieces--to avoid emotional influence
from memories connected to hearing the piece before--in both a major and
minor key. Researchers asked them to pinpoint the feelings they
experienced while listening to the music, as well as predict what kind
of emotions they perceived other people would experience while listening
to the song.
Participants perceived the sad music (the songs in a
minor key) as tragic, but it didn't make them as miserable as they
thought another person would feel, the researchers write:
The
listeners felt less gloomy, meditative, and miserable as well as more
fascinated, dear, in love, merry, animated, and inclined to dance when
they listened to sad music compared with their actual perceptions of the
same music.
Part of the reason for this could be that we expect
to feel sad, and are thus pleased when our expectations come to pass, a
phenomenon called "sweet anticipation."
"Even if listeners
experience negative emotions when listening to sad music, sweet
anticipation might still allow them to feel positive emotions," the
paper concludes. "Even if the music itself is perceived as negative, and
negative emotion is aroused in listeners in part, we have a tendency to
experience ambivalent emotions by concurrently feeling pleased by
virtue of our cognitive appraisal."
It could also have to do with
the fact that the sadness we feel isn't the direct result of a sad
situation. Listening to someone else sing about his or her sadness is a
vicarious experience, so the sadness we feel isn't as threatening to our
well-being. We can just sit back and enjoy someone else's heartbreak.
/Popsci.Com/
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