Why do we like to listen to sad songs?
Miscellaneous / / October 22, 2023
Scientists have differing opinions on this issue.
Sad music has an interesting paradox: We don't usually like being sad in real life, but we like art that makes us sad. Many scientists and philosophers, starting with Aristotle, have tried to explain this.
Perhaps, thanks to sad songs, we experience catharsis and get relief from negative emotions. Perhaps there is some kind of evolutionary advantage in this. Or maybe it’s society that teaches us to value suffering. Or our body in response to the painful melancholy of music produces hormones that provide a comforting effect. Scientists have not yet come to a single conclusion, but are mainly inclined to two versions.
They help us cope with emotions
Experimental philosopher and psychologist Joshua Knobe of Yale University is married to an indie rock singer who sings sad songs. Recently, together with his colleagues, he tried explain the paradox of sad music and understand its essence.
Previously, Knobe found that people often conceptualize the same thing in two ways: concretely and abstractly. On the one hand, we can consider someone an artist if he has a specific set of skills - for example, he is a master of the brush. On the other hand, if he does not have certain abstract traits - for example, he lacks curiosity and passions and he simply copies the masterpieces of the classics for the sake of money - we can assume that he is not an artist is. Knobe and his student Tara Venkatesan, a cognitive scientist and opera singer, thought that sad songs might have the same dual nature.
Scientists already know that our emotional response to music is multifaceted: we are not just happy when we hear a beautiful song, and we are not just sad when we hear a sad one. Survey with 363 respondents showedthat sad songs evoke in us a variety of emotions, which can be divided into three conditional categories:
- grief, including strong negative feelings such as anger, horror and despair;
- melancholy, gentle sadness, melancholy or self-pity;
- sweet sadness, the pleasant pain of consolation or gratitude.
At the same time, many survey participants described their condition as a combination of all three categories.
Musicology professor Tuomas Eerola found in his research that unfamiliar sad songs are more often touch especially sensitive people. According to him, they are ready to plunge into the fictional sadness that music brings them. These people also experience greater hormonal changes in response to sad tunes.
Considering how many layers of our emotions are and how difficult it is to convey them in words, it is not surprising that sad music turns out to be a paradox. But that still doesn't explain why we enjoy it and find it meaningful.
They allow us to feel connected to other people.
Some psychologists studied, how certain aspects of music—mode, tempo, rhythm, and timbre—are linked to listeners’ emotions. It turned out that certain types of songs perform almost universal functions. For example, lullabies Different peoples have similar acoustic features, which give both children and adults a sense of security.
According to Tuomas Eerola, throughout our lives we learn to determine the relationship between our emotions and the way we “sound.” We recognize expressions of emotion in speech, and most signals are used in a similar way in music.
However, other scientists believe that such correlations do little to clarify the value of sad music. Music psychologist Patrick Yuslin believes, that in this way the explanations move from the level of “Why Beethoven’s Third Symphony causes sadness” to the level of “Why a slow tempo causes sadness.”
This is why Yuslin and his colleagues hypothesized that there are cognitive mechanisms that can be used to induce sadness in listeners. Unconscious reflexes in the brain stem; synchronization of musical rhythm with some internal, for example, heartbeat; conditioned reactions to certain sounds; caused by memories; emotional contagion; understanding music - all these factors may play some role.
“Perhaps” because sadness is a very strong emotion that can cause a positive empathic response: another person’s sadness can touch us too. Joshua Knobe explains it this way: we feel lonely, and then we listen to music or pick up a book - and we feel that we are no longer so lonely.
To test this hypothesis, the researchers conducted a two-part experiment. In the first part, more than 400 participants were given descriptions of four songs, ranging from technically imperfect but emotionally deep to technically perfect but emotionally flat. Participants had to rate on a 7-point scale how much each song reflected the true essence of the music. The goal was to find out how important the expression of emotions is - joy, sadness, hatred, something else - for music on an intuitive level. Overall, deeply emotional but technically imperfect songs scored the most. That is, emotional expressiveness was more important than technical skill.
In the second part of the study, a new 450 participants were each given 72 descriptions of emotionally charged songs that expressed a variety of feelings, including contempt, narcissism, inspiration or lasciviousness. For comparison, they were also given prompts that described conversations that mentioned similar emotions. For example: “A friend tells you about how his week went and says that he is sad.” As a result, the emotions that participants felt embodied the essence of music coincided with the emotions that make people feel more connected to each other during interactions. This is love, joy, loneliness, sadness, ecstasy, calm, sadness.
Philosopher Mario Atti-Pieker, who helped lead the experiment, says the results are compelling. He came up with a simple hypothesis: perhaps we listen to music not for an emotional response, but for a sense of connection with others. After all, many participants admitted that, despite all its sensuality, sad music did not give them much pleasure. If we look at the paradox of sad music through this lens, our love for sad melodies is not a recognition of the value of sadness, but a recognition of the value of connection and the shared experience of emotions. Other scientists quickly agreed with this opinion.
However, sad music is multi-layered, like an onion. And such an explanation raises even more questions. Who are we trying to connect with? With the performer? With yourself in the past? With someone imaginary? How can sad music be entirely about one thing? Is it strength art does not partly stem from his ability to go beyond generalization and expand experience?
Researchers recognize the diversity of the subject matter and the limitations of their research. But philosopher Atty-Picker offers a less scientific argument: sad songs simply seem to be exactly what we all need at some point.
Find out more about music🎵
- “After it, a feeling of ecstasy appears”: educator Anna Vilenskaya - on how to enjoy classical music
- How musicians deceive our expectations so that the melody evokes vivid emotions
- 5 popular myths about music that you should say goodbye to