Wallowing in Despair (And in Beautiful Music)
Sad music carries a certain appeal to many of us. Whether we’re having a bad day, grieving the loss of a loved one, or contemplating an existential crisis, we may turn up the volume on an Adele song and wallow in our despair. Yet does sad music truly perpetuate our own misery, or does it facilitate positive outcomes? Could both be true?
It’s a complex question with several answers. This TED talk overviews one musician/researcher’s perspective, and includes terms such as absorption, reflection, and rumination, which will prove more relevant to our lives than expected! Absorption describes the tendency to immerse oneself in the emotional landscape of music, in a way that may be detached from feeling actual sadness. Do you ever just turn the music up loud on your AirPods and relish in being surrounded by pure beauty? Next, reflection refers to the way that people use music to make sense of their own lives, potentially processing their own emotions related to sadness in a cathartic manner or finding solidarity in sadness. Have you ever sobbed along to a breakup song, thinking solely about your ex? Finally, rumination is an unhealthy loop of negative thinking in one’s mind, often related to depression. Do you ever find yourself replaying the same conversations and situations over and over, berating yourself for the mistakes you made? Fun (well, not so fun) fact — negative feelings may arise more easily for people with depressive disorders (check out this article to learn more about sad music and people with major depressive disorder).
Interesting, right? Researchers thought so too. Sachs et al. (2021) ran an experiment to assess situations and motivations for listening to sad music as well as the relationship between personality factors and the quality and intensity of emotional responses to sad music. They recruited 218 Amazon Mechanical Turk workers and 213 University of Southern California psychology students to complete a Qualtrics survey consisting of personality measures from a variety of scales, measuring traits including the Big Five, empathy, absorption, rumination, nostalgia, and depressive symptoms. Subsequently, participants were told to reflect on music that they perceived as sad, and to rate their level of enjoyment in listening to it. Participants also used a 5-point Likert scale (from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”) to rate several different reasons for listening to sad music. Finally, participants were asked about the quality of music that they would listen to in different situations, such as a holiday or a breakup, and to describe how happy, sad, and energetic the music sounded. Sounds like quite an emotionally taxing study!
Researchers examined results in accordance with three emotional responses to sad music: sublime, vital, and unease. Now what does that mean? Well, sublime feelings can be described through amazement and pleasure; vital feelings relate to a sense of aliveness, and feelings of unease relate to apprehension. They all sound pretty intense, right? The personality traits of emotional stability, fantasy, absorption, rumination, and nostalgia proneness were positively associated with sublime feelings, while extraversion was negatively associated (Hmm — it makes sense that being caught up in one’s emotions — whether through an imaginary world or through intense recollection of one’s own experiences — can generate awe. And perhaps extroverts are less likely to linger on such things). The personality traits of agreeability and fantasy were negatively associated with vital feelings (Maybe real life doesn’t feel as pronounced when one is too polite to disrupt the flow or when daydreaming). Finally, the personality traits of extraversion, empathic concern, personal distress and absorption were positively associated with feelings of unease (Perhaps extraversion and empathic concern lead individuals to feel too much for others, increasing reasons to worry, while being stuck in one’s feelings can be uneasy if those feelings are negative. Meanwhile, personal distress seems self-explanatory).
Regarding situations in which individuals would listen to sad music, the personality trait of reflection was positively associated with the “positive self” — independent activities centered around focus or creativity — while the personality trait of empathic concern was negatively associated (It makes sense that reflecting on one’s own experiences steers one toward autonomous innovation, while being concerned for others does not. In difficult times, is it best to be solitary or to join with others? It may very well depend on the individual). The personality trait of fantasy was positively associated with “melancholy”, and the personality trait of rumination was positively associated with “tension” (It can be easy to get lost in sadness when brooding over possibilities, and contemplating too deeply can certainly be stressful). The personality trait of openness to experience was positively associated with the “positive other” — a collaborative version of the “positive self” — while conscientiousness, emotional stability, and rumination were negatively associated (An open mindset may steer an individual toward dreaming with others, while the latter factors require heavy focus and may not allow room for the same collaboration).
When looking at the reasons why participants enjoyed sad music, absorption and rumination were correlated with predicting positive emotion regulation. Perspective taking was correlated with predicting cognitive empathy; this reasoning seems self-explanatory. Fantasy and rumination were correlated with predicting negative emotion regulation.
Sublime feelings were found to serve as a mediator — an intermediate process — between the fantasy and absorption personality traits and enjoyment of sad music. It makes sense that fantasy and feelings of amazement are related! Rumination was found to correlate with enjoyment of sad music, but it was positively associated with feelings of unease. Perhaps there is a gloomy satisfaction to be found in sad music, but it won’t necessarily bring calmness. Sublime and unease emotions mediated the relationship between rumination and the enjoyment of sad music by purging negative feelings. It looks like sad music can serve as an outlet in some ways!
Because this study was conducted through self-reports, direct measures may yield different results, as expected changes in mood do not always come to fruition. Although people may prefer to listen to sad music, is this actually good for them? We see that rumination can indeed serve as a reasoning for enjoying this type of music; however, rumination is objectively not a healthy process. It’s difficult to draw definite conclusions for topics like these!
Examining the ties between different personality traits, motivations for listening to sad music, and emotional reactions can offer us an interesting peek into the complicated realm of how our brains regulate. Hopefully the content of this blog post gives you even more to ruminate over next time you’re in your feelings and playing Adele!
References
Adele. (2021, October 14). Adele — Easy On Me. Youtube. Retrieved April 8, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3ASj1L6_sY
Garrido, S. (2016, June 29). Why do we like sad music?. Youtube. Retrieved April 8, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SjWguOXVwE
Sachs, M. E., Damasio, A., & Habibi, A. (2021). Unique personality profiles predict when and why sad music is enjoyed. Psychology of Music, 49(5), 1145–1164. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735620932660
Sussex Publishers. (n.d.). Big 5 personality traits. Psychology Today. Retrieved April 8, 2022, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/big-5-personality-traits
Yoon, S., Verona, E., Schlauch, R., Schneider, S., & Rottenberg, J. (2020). Why do depressed people prefer sad music? Emotion, 20(4), 613–624. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000573
