What does Science have to say?

I decided to do my own study on the topic of sadness and why people consume it. I asked friends, family, professors, and other random people for feedback to a few different questions.  I asked if they listened to sad music and if so, when. I asked if they liked seeing a montage of happiness on their social media feed when they are feeling down.

To the first question, most people responded that they listened to sad music because by chance it happened to be playing, idle listening. The next most popular answer was people listened to sad music because they found it beautiful or a nice change of pace, enjoyable though novelty. The last most popular answer was that people found it therapeutic. They used sad music to live through it. They wanted to feel a sort of connection to the music. It is a way for them to sort through their feelings. Import note, is that people do not stay there for forever. Once they feel ready, they move on to finding funny or happy content. The music I believe in combination with what I have read and seen in my survey; is what people use as part of mood regulation. Mood regulation is not anything fancy, it is simply strategies people may have for getting their mood back to a normal neutral state. The greater the worktime, the greater the playtime people need. Sad music acts as a playground for people to explore their emotions.

We can see support for my results with E. Glenn Schellenberg and associates in their article Liking for happy- and sad-sounding music: Effects of exposure for the Online Journal of Cognition & Emotion wrote an interesting article with the intention was to see the effect of exposure of music over time.

Their study was to address other studies that appear to clash at first glance, some saying people liked music the more they listened and another that said people grow tired of listing to the same song. E. Glenn Schellenberg and associates found a “U-curve” where both points of view can exist, just on opposite sides of the curve. Her study finds that people like music the more they here the song up to a point and then there is diminishing returns, and finally there is a dislike of overplaying a song.

The one variable that is of interest is that participants listened to sad and happy songs. While most people in their study preferred happy songs, why did people prefer sad songs?

“(overall)…listeners preferred happy- over sad-sounding music, and we have no reason to believe that the present listeners would differ in this regard. Indeed, the observed interaction between listening condition and emotional status stemmed from relatively high levels of liking for sad sounding music among the incidental listeners (see Figure 1). This finding is consistent with two alternative hypotheses that could be tested in future research. One involves mood congruency and the proposal that listeners in a negative mood demonstrate enhanced liking for music with negative (sad) affect. The other suggests that the appeal of sad music is linked with its calming effects, most likely its association with reductions in arousal levels. As noted, two distinguishing characteristics of sad-sounding music are its slow tempo and minor mode.”

Miriam Serrano Soliva wrote The effectiveness of live music in reducing anxiety and depression among patients undergoing haemodialysis. A randomised controlled pilot study for Plos One where she concluded “It is concluded that listening to live classical music during haemodialysis sessions reduces anxiety and depression levels in HD patients”

Here we can see that music can return people to a more upbeat state and that it is part of mood regulation.

We can also see supporting literate in the Journal of Communication, the article Entertainment as Pleasurable and Meaningful: Identifying Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motivations for Entertainment Consumption by Mary Beth Oliver & Arthur A. Raney has a lot to say that supports my study.

“…there exist numerous forms of entertainment for which ‘enjoyment’ may not be the most apt descriptor of the gratifications that individuals experience. Tragic drama, moving cinema, heartbreaking opera, or poignant novels and poems are but a few examples of entertainment that may be deeply gratifying, but not ‘‘enjoyable’’ in the colloquial sense of the term. Indeed, to say that one ‘‘enjoyed’’ or was ‘‘entertained by’’ a film such as Hotel Rwanda would seem decidedly odd, at best.”

“The idea that moving or meaningful entertainment could be gratifying, but simultaneously not readily characterized in terms of positively valenced affect has generated considerable theorizing that has aimed at resolving the apparent ‘‘puzzle’’ or ‘‘paradox’’ of the ‘‘enjoyment’’ of genres such as sad films or tearjerkers (Oliver, 1993; Zillmann, 1998).”

“Similarly, some scholars have suggested that entertainment—including entertainment that elicits negative affect—can be conceptualized as a form of ‘‘play’’ that ultimately helps viewers/users cope with or confront their realities (Vorderer, 2001) and that may further have evolutionarily benefits in terms of providing safe ‘‘training’’ for dangerous or threatening situations or allowing for the enactment of a diversity of cognitive and behavioral responses to the environment (e.g., Steen & Owens, 2001).”

Thalia R. Goldstein of Boston College writes in her paper The Pleasure of Unadulterated Sadness: Experiencing Sorrow in Fiction, Nonfiction, and “In Person” for the American Psychological Association that “Fictional works can be manipulated to create large emotional effects; indeed, this is often one of the prime goals of a fiction writer (Oatley, 1999). A nonfictional work does not have this kind of freedom (Mellmann, 2002). Fictional films, for instance, are organized so as to manipulate the audiences’ sympathy and engage their emotions (Coplan, 2006). Fiction abstracts, simplifies, and compresses real life to elicit strong emotions in the audience (Mar & Oatley, 2008).”

“Knowing that we have entered a fictional world allows our emotions a “safe” space to be released, without real world consequences.”

“Consistent with this finding, Keen (2006) argued that nonfiction readers operate in a skeptical and investigative mode, whereas fiction readers become immersed in the lives of the characters. In short, because we mute our appraisal system when we read fiction, we are more likely to allow ourselves to feel powerfully in response to fiction than in everyday life”

“Fiction provides readers with a controlled environment in which to explore emotions they try to avoid in real life (Mar & Oatley, 2008). Fiction also allows us to safely practice our understanding of others and our emotional responses to other’s situations (Zunshine, 2006). Fiction allows for the cognitive simulation of an event without any real world consequences; we are not tied to feeling any one way and therefore can feel more”

“When people recalled a tragic event that they had personally experienced, they felt not only sadness but also anxiety. In contrast, the sadness reported when witnessing a sad movie was unadulterated by anxiety. Perhaps this is because, as suggested by Coplan (2006), in our own lives we know the event will not go away, and we will have to keep dealing with the long term effect. However, when watching a movie we know that when the film ends, we can walk away from that world.”

If we turn our attention to the other question about seeing happy people on social media, people don’t want to see that kind of happy stuff when they are in a bad mood, it makes them more frustrated, or at least that is what I have concluded after my second question talking to people. I asked people if they found pictures of people being happy frustrating or upsetting when they were in a bad mood. And the answer was an overwhelming yes. There was a sense that they wished other people understood what they were going through. Social media sometimes being a trophy rack of peoples’ life accomplishments, subtle brags about social status, or posts featuring their amazing lives with awesome friends, contrasts from people that are feeling down. It pushes people away. This may be partly why we see depression rates in people with social media.

“People who are ‘extremely online — spending more than two hours a day on social media — can end up feeling lonely or depressed. One widely cited 2018 study from the University of Pennsylvania found that college undergraduates who limited their use of social media apps Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to 30 minutes a day quickly saw significant reductions in their feelings of depression and loneliness, compared with those who did not change their social media behaviors. “At least with some of these most popular, image-heavy sources of social media, we know they cause negative affect and isolation,” says Stone of Demographic Intelligence in CQ Researcher’s article Loneliness Epidemic.

We can find further support for this in an Article called the Association Between Social Media use and Depression Among U.S. adults written by Liu yi Lin and associates, they found mixed results of depression in young adults using social media. They speculate “One explanation may be that exposure to highly idealized representations of peers on social media elicits feelings of enby and the distorted belief that others lead happier and/or more successful lives. Consequently, these envious feelings may lead to a sense of self- inferiority and depression over time.”

In the American Journal of Preventive Medicine Brian Primack and associates writes in their paper The Temporal Associations Between Social Media Use and Depression “This study provides the first large-scale data investigating the directionality of SMU and depression. It finds strong associations between initial SMU and subsequent development of depression but no increase in SMU after depression. This pattern suggests temporal associations between SMU and depression, an important criterion for causality.”

People who are sad what other people to level with them, someone to relate to, someone that has experienced the same negative emotions. People who are down want to hear validation about their grievances, and hear that despite things looking bad, want relief in the form of hope from people who have gone though the same things and made it out of the darkness. People may otherwise want a place to explore their emotions outside of a journal. Movies, books, music, and videogames can provided spaces where the imagination is the limit, and any number of situations can be created for people to explore with their grief. My conclusion of all of this is perhaps if people can find a nugget of laughter or happiness in the grimdark setting of Warhammer 40k or a sad song, then perhaps they can find some in their own lives.