Sad music induces pleasant emotion

Abstract

In general, sad music is thought to cause us to experience sadness, which is considered an unpleasant emotion. As a result, the question arises as to why we listen to sad music if it evokes sadness. One possible answer to this question is that we may actually feel positive emotions when we listen to sad music. This suggestion may appear to be counterintuitive; however, in this study, by dividing musical emotion into perceived emotion and felt emotion, we investigated this potential emotional response to music. We hypothesized that felt and perceived emotion may not actually coincide in this respect: sad music would be perceived as sad, but the experience of listening to sad music would evoke positive emotions. A total of 44 participants listened to musical excerpts and provided data on perceived and felt emotions by rating 62 descriptive words or phrases related to emotions on a scale that ranged from 0 (not at all) to 4 (very much). The results revealed that the sad music was perceived to be more tragic, whereas the actual experiences of the participants listening to the sad music induced them to feel more romantic, more blithe, and less tragic emotions than they actually perceived with respect to the same music. Thus, the participants experienced ambivalent emotions when they listened to the sad music. After considering the possible reasons that listeners were induced to experience emotional ambivalence by the sad music, we concluded that the formulation of a new model would be essential for examining the emotions induced by music and that this new model must entertain the possibility that what we experience when listening to music is vicarious emotion.

Towards Artificial Empathy

“…A typical example of (3) can be observed in a situation where we enjoy sad music [22,23]. The objective (virtualized) self perceives sad music as sad while the subjective self feels pleasant emotion by listening to this music.…”

“…In cases of sympathy and compassion, one's emotional state is not synchronized with that of others', but different emotional states are induced. In the case of listening to sad music [22,23], the listener's objective (virtualized) self perceives sad music as sad, while the subjective self feels pleasant emotion. Furthermore, the concept of self-other discrimination can be extended to the in-group/out-group concept, as well as higher order emotional states such as envy and schadenfreude.…”

“…A typical phenomenon in this case can be seen when enjoying sad music. Sad music is perceived as sad by the objective self, while listening to this music itself is felt as pleasant by the subjective self [22,23].…”

Affect-matching music improves cognitive performance in adults and young children for both positive and negative emotions

“…Barber's Adagio for Strings, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, the Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem, and Elgar's Elegy) were selected by participants and used by Salimpoor et al (2009) to induce physiological arousal, pleasure and chills. Vuoskoski, Thompson, McIlwain, and Eerola (2012) found that sad music induced, in addition to sadness, a range of positive emotions (see also Kawakami, Furukawa, Katahira, & Okanoya, 2013), and that participants who scored highly on trait empathy and openness to experience enjoyed sad music the most.A second problem with the assumption is that listeners are not just 'passive' recipients of music. Rather, listeners use music strategically to regulate their current emotions or moods in everyday situations (Miranda & Claes, 2009; Saarikallio, 2010;Thoma, Ryf, Mohiyeddini, Ehlert, & Nater, 2012;van Goethem & Sloboda, 2011).…”

“…Barber's Adagio for Strings, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, the Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem, and Elgar's Elegy) were selected by participants and used by Salimpoor et al (2009) to induce physiological arousal, pleasure and chills. Vuoskoski, Thompson, McIlwain, and Eerola (2012) found that sad music induced, in addition to sadness, a range of positive emotions (see also Kawakami, Furukawa, Katahira, & Okanoya, 2013), and that participants who scored highly on trait empathy and openness to experience enjoyed sad music the most.…”