Sad Songs Can Actually Lift You Up, New Study Says

Rebecca Lewis November 10, 2014

Nobody wants to be sad. We hate to see our loved one sad and we try everything to feel better during times of melancholy. But why is it that we love hearing sad songs? Why do we keep downloading them and purchasing expensive concert tickets? In the new study published in the journal Plos One, researchers found that for many individuals, listening to sad music can instead lead to beneficial emotional effects.

The study involved an online survey of 772 participants covering diverse age groups responding to questions exploring their experiences listing to sad music. The authors looked at principles that underlie the evocation of sadness by music and the rewarding aspects of music-evoked sadness, among other factors.

In total, the survey featured 76 items. Participants were instructed to complete the survey individually and in a quiet environment without listening to any music.

Discussing the results, the authors said that, surprisingly, "nostalgia rather than sadness is the most frequent emotion evoked by sad music. Correspondingly, memory was rated as the most important principle through which sadness is evoked. Finally, the trait empathy contributes to the evocation of sadness via contagion, appraisal, and by engaging social functions. The present findings indicate that emotional responses to sad music are multifaceted, are modulated by empathy, and are linked with a multidimensional experience of pleasure revealing that listening to sad music can lead to beneficial emotional effects such as regulation of negative emotion and mood as well as consolation. Such beneficial emotional effects constitute the prime motivations for engaging with sad music in everyday life."

Another interesting observation by the authors of this study was that "the beneficial emotional effects of sad music may be enhanced in emotionally unstable individuals, because our results suggest that they use sad music to regulate emotion." They had similarly stated in the abstract that "appreciation of sad music follows a mood-congruent fashion and is greater among individuals with high empathy and low emotional stability."

They said "results strongly highlight that, for most of the people, the engagement with sad music in everyday life is correlated with its potential to regulate negative moods and emotions as well as to provide consolation."

The two authors are from the Freie Universität in Berlin. Koelsch is a professor of music psychology, and one of his areas of expertise is music therapy. Taruffi is a research assistant. They said their study’s potential implications include developing music interventions "designed to improve health and well-being in healthy subjects as well as in the treatment of psychiatric disorders."

Source of this article: Taruffi L, Koelsch S (2014) The Paradox of Music-Evoked Sadness: An Online Survey