A sense of communal sharing boosts our feeling of being moved and triggers feelings of comfort and belonging.Ī related suggestion is that Adele’s sad music can be a friend to us. This lets us share an emotional experience with others. Indeed, when we have listened to “30,” we may turn to reaction videos to see how others feel. This may explain why the people most likely to feel moved by sad music are those high in empathy. This experience is sometimes called kama muta, a Sanskrit term meaning “moved by love.” Feeling moved can involve chills, goosebumps, a flood of emotions (including romantic ones), a warmth in our chest, and elation.īut why do we feel moved? The American writer James Baldwin got at this when he reflected: “The things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” Similarly, feeling moved can come from us suddenly feeling closer to other people. The psychology of sad musicĪ key reason we enjoy sad songs is because they profoundly “move” us. Yet other studies have hinted at a role for prolactin and oxytocin in making sad music feel good.
One study found no evidence that sad music increases prolactin levels. Clicking on Adele’s song may be like clicking on our own metaphorical morphine drip. They do so by making us feel calmed, consoled, and supported.įeeling Adele’s pain, or recalling our own, may cause such chemical changes within us. When we experience real-life loss, or empathize with another’s pain, hormones such as prolactin and oxytocin are released within us. Music could almost be compared to a powerful drug.From the GGSC to your bookshelf: 30 science-backed tools for well-being. The capacity to understand the emotions of others is crucial for navigating the social world we live in, and therefore exercising such an ability is likely to be rewarding – due to its evolutionary significance.
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It is also possible that the effect is mainly psychological, where those who allow themselves to be emotionally immersed in the sad music are simply exercising their full emotional repertoire in a way that is inherently rewarding. This mix of hormones is probably particularly potent when you take the actual loss and sadness out of the equation – which you can often do in music-induced sadness. This response is driven by hormones such as oxytocin and prolactin, which actually induce the feelings of comfort, warmth and mild pleasure in us. A recent theory proposes that even a fictional sadness is enough to fool our body to trigger such an endocrine response, intended to soften the mental pain involved in real loss. This is due to a cocktail of chemicals triggered by crying. We have all experienced the feeling of relief and serenity after a good cry. This specific trait best predicted whether our participants reported being moved by the sad music. While empathising means responding to somebody’s perceived emotion by experiencing a similar feeling, empathetic concern means also feeling tenderness, compassion and sympathy for them. This specific component of empathy is known as “empathic concern”.
What’s more, our findings suggest that the key to the enjoyment is not only the ability to empathise with the sad emotions expressed by the music, but also the ability to self-regulate and distance oneself from this process. Pleasure from sad music may be a reward for empathetic concern (Dragon Images)
Conversely, those with a tendency of being low on empathy hardly ever reported being moved by this music. Crucially, we found that the people who were moved by the piece also scored highly on empathy. Participants who experienced being moved reported intense, pleasurable, and yet sad emotions at the same time. The experiences generated by this particular music ranged from feeling relaxed or moved to sometimes being anxious or nervous.
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