The negative emotions you feel while listening to songs can bring you pleasure.
- In the study, 82% of volunteers said that removing sadness decreased the enjoyment of the song.
- While listening to a song they loved, participants felt sad, but they enjoyed being moved.
- So, “being moved triggers sadness and sadness triggers emotion.”
When listening to certain music, people can feel sad. Yet they continue to appreciate them. “We don’t really understand why,” reported a researcher from the University of New South Wales (Australia). So, she decided to carry out a study, the results of which were published in the journal Plos Onein order to look into the question.
Music: for 82% of participants, sadness brought pleasure
For the purposes of the work, the scientist recruited 50 people, mainly music students. They themselves chose a piece that evoked sadness and that they liked, ranging from classics by Ludwig van Beethoven to songs by Taylor Swift. Next, participants were asked to imagine that their sadness could be “removed” by listening to music. “We know that many people are very good when it comes to thought experiments, so this is a reasonable approach to use and, in the worst case scenario, it should yield no results,” clarified Emery Schubertwho led the research.
Overall, volunteers reported completing the task successfully. After the imagined sadness was removed, the young adults were asked whether they appreciated the piece of music differently. According to the results, 82% of them said that removing sadness reduced the pleasure the song provided. So, “the sadness felt while listening to music could actually be appreciated and increase the pleasure of listening to it.”
“Being moved triggers sadness and sadness triggers emotion”
The study also provided evidence for a “direct effect hypothesis”, which draws on the multicomponent model of emotion, in which a component of negative emotion is experienced as positive during experiences musical. According to the authors, this means that people may feel sad, but they enjoy being moved. “It’s a feeling mixed with positive and negative aspects. It was previously thought that when people felt sadness in response to music they enjoyed, they were actually feeling an emotion, but the results of this study suggest that being moved and feeling sadness have overlapping meanings. In other words, being moved triggers sadness, and sadness triggers emotion.
