This poem is not only good; it represents a reality of our time. It is quite typical that the youth of
today lose themselves for hours in listening to songs with their headphones on, and parents
complain, It's that damn phone. It is not very unusual that one listens to upbeat music when
wanting to raise one's spirits. But even more frequent is listening to sad or heartfelt songs when
one is down. Science reports that it is due to the catharsis phenomenon. Nevertheless, it can also
be a negative thing as the determination of emotion and the regulation of it may become weak
due to the fact that a person is constantly trying to change their mood through music.
Still, what if the reason for our choosing that sad playlist is not only the desire to get the sadness
out? What if it is something more complicated and, frankly, more beautiful? An intriguing
research by Ai Kawakami and her team delves into this very query, and their discovery might
upset your view of your most cherished sad song.
The main question is a paradox: if sadness is an unpleasant feeling that we try to avoid, then why
would we still let it come into our ears willingly? The scientists came up with an excellent
concept, which involved two distinct categories of feelings: perceived emotion and felt emotion.
Perceived Emotion is the one that you identify objectively. For instance, you may listen to a
music piece in a minor key with a slow pace and conclude, This song is sad. It is similar to
diagnosing a person who is frowning and perceiving that he is unhappy.
Felt Emotion is the actual emotion that you experience internally. This is where it gets
fascinating. Just because a song is sad in your perception, it does not mean that you will also feel
sad. In their experiment, the researchers made the subjects listen to music in major (generally
happy-sounding) and minor (generally sad-sounding) keys. Then they instructed them to score
both the way they recognised the music's emotion and how it actually made them feel. The
findings were very telling. While the listeners described the minor-key music as sad, their felt
sad emotion was much lower. What is more, during the listening of that sad music, they did not
feel sad but rather more pleasure – the two emotions termed romantic and blithe by the
study – than those they recognised in the music.
To put it simply, the sad music was not only making them sad but was also giving them an
ambivalent, mixed emotional experience where beauty and sorrow coexist.
So, how can this be? The research presents an important idea: vicarious emotion. The emotions
we evoke from art (music, film, painting) differ from the ones we experience in everyday life.
When the sadness is due to a personal loss, the emotion is direct and linked to a concrete, painful
event. On the contrary, the sadness associated with a beautiful piano melody is indirect or
vicarious. You are in a safe place. The music will not hurt you. This safety allows you to
experience the core of sadness - its profundity, its reflective nature - without the pure, unpleasant
danger that is always there with sadness in the real world. The researchers argue that this
vicarious sadness is different in quality. It is a pleasant sadness. It gives us the opportunity to
feel the depths of the emotion from a safe distance, enjoying its aesthetic value without being
overwhelmed by the real-world consequences. This is why we feel less of the tragedy we see and
more of the romantic, fascinated feelings. We are thus, to a certain extent, crying because of the
beauty of the grief itself, not because of a personal disaster.
This leads us back to mental health. Listening to sad music is not always about self-pity or trying
to artificially control one's mood. Instead, it can become a necessary and powerful emotional
processing tool. It is a safe harbour in which we can experience the complex feelings. It does not
deny our sadness but supports it as it reflects it back to us in a beautiful and non-threatening way.
The music says, I know this feeling, and in that mutual understanding, we feel less isolated.
Nevertheless, the difference is subtle. Music can become an escape if it is constantly used for
ruminating or avoiding facing one's problems in the real world. However, if one uses it
consciously, then putting on a sad song is not a show of weakness but of self-awareness - being
with a safe, vicarious emotion that helps one to better understand one's heart, all through the
beautiful suffering of a melody.
