Sadness

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A detail of the 1672 sculpture Entombment of Christ, showing Mary Magdalene crying Sepulcre Arc-en-Barrois 111008 12.jpg
A detail of the 1672 sculpture Entombment of Christ, showing Mary Magdalene crying

Sadness is an emotional pain associated with, or characterized by, feelings of disadvantage, loss, despair, grief, helplessness, disappointment and sorrow. An individual experiencing sadness may become quiet or lethargic, and withdraw themselves from others. An example of severe sadness is depression, a mood which can be brought on by major depressive disorder or persistent depressive disorder. Crying can be an indication of sadness. [1]

Contents

Sadness is one of the six basic emotions described by Paul Ekman, along with happiness, anger, surprise, fear, and disgust. [2] : 271–4 

Childhood

Sad girls. Photo by Paolo Monti, 1953 Paolo Monti - Serie fotografica (Venezia, 1953) - BEIC 6363533.jpg
Sad girls. Photo by Paolo Monti, 1953

Sadness is a common experience in childhood. Sometimes, sadness can lead to depression. Some families may have a (conscious or unconscious) rule that sadness is "not allowed", [3] but Robin Skynner has suggested that this may cause problems, arguing that with sadness "screened off", people can become shallow and manic. [4] : 33, 36  Pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton suggests that acknowledging sadness can make it easier for families to address more serious emotional problems. [5] : 46, 48 

Sadness is part of the normal process of the child separating from an early symbiosis with the mother and becoming more independent. Every time a child separates a little more, he or she will have to cope with a small loss. If the mother cannot allow the minor distress involved, the child may never learn how to deal with sadness by themselves. [4] : 158–9  Brazelton argues that too much cheering a child up devalues the emotion of sadness for them; [5] : 52  and Selma Fraiberg suggests that it is important to respect a child's right to experience a loss fully and deeply. [6]

Margaret Mahler also saw the ability to feel sadness as an emotional achievement, as opposed for example to warding it off through restless hyperactivity. [7] D. W. Winnicott similarly saw in sad crying the psychological root of valuable musical experiences in later life. [8]

Neuroanatomy

A large amount of research has been conducted on the neuroscience of sadness. [9] According to the American Journal of Psychiatry , sadness has been found to be associated with "increases in bilateral activity within the vicinity of the middle and posterior temporal cortex, lateral cerebellum, cerebellar vermis, midbrain, putamen, and caudate." [10] Jose V. Pardo has his M.D and Ph.D and leads a research program in cognitive neuroscience. Using positron emission tomography (PET) Pardo and his colleagues were able to provoke sadness among seven normal men and women by asking them to think about sad things. They observed increased brain activity in the bilateral inferior and orbitofrontal cortex. [11] In a study that induced sadness in subjects by showing emotional film clips, the feeling was correlated with significant increases in regional brain activity, especially in the prefrontal cortex, in the region called Brodmann's area 9, and the thalamus. A significant increase in activity was also observed in the bilateral anterior temporal structures. [12]

Coping mechanisms

A man expressing sadness with his head in his hands Sadness at the beach.jpg
A man expressing sadness with his head in his hands
A carving of the family of Marija and Petar Skuljevic exhibiting sadness over their deaths Grob Marije i Petra Shkuljvitsha na srbskom praoslavnom groblju u Dubrovniku.jpg
A carving of the family of Marija and Petar Škuljević exhibiting sadness over their deaths

People deal with sadness in different ways, and it is an important emotion because it helps to motivate people to deal with their situation. Some coping mechanisms include: getting social support and/or spending time with a pet, [13] creating a list, or engaging in some activity to express sadness. [14] Some individuals, when feeling sad, may exclude themselves from a social setting, so as to take the time to recover from the feeling.[ citation needed ]

While being one of the moods people most want to shake, sadness can sometimes be perpetuated by the very coping strategies chosen, such as ruminating, "drowning one's sorrows", or permanently isolating oneself. [2] : 69–70  As alternative ways of coping with sadness to the above, cognitive behavioral therapy suggests instead either challenging one's negative thoughts, or scheduling some positive event as a distraction. [2] : 72 

Being attentive to, and patient with, one's sadness may also be a way for people to learn through solitude; [15] while emotional support to help people stay with their sadness can be further helpful. [4] : 164  Such an approach is fueled by the underlying belief that loss (when felt wholeheartedly) can lead to a new sense of aliveness, and to a re-engagement with the outside world. [16]

Pupil empathy

Pupil size may be an indicator of sadness. A sad facial expression with small pupils is judged to be more intensely sad as the pupil size decreases. [17] A person's own pupil size also mirrors this and becomes smaller when viewing sad faces with small pupils. No parallel effect exists when people look at neutral, happy or angry expressions. [17] The greater degree to which a person's pupils mirror another predicts a person's greater score on empathy. [18] In disorders such as autism and psychopathy, facial expressions that represent sadness may be subtle, which may show a need for a more non-linguistic situation to affect their level of empathy. [18]

Vocal expression

According to DIPR scientist Swati Johar, [19] : VII  sadness is an emotion "identified by current speech dialogue and processing systems". [19] : 12  Measurements to distinguish sadness from other emotions in the human voice include root mean square (RMS) energy, inter-word silence and speaking rate. [20] It is communicated mostly by lowering the mean and variability of the fundamental frequency (f0), besides being associated with lower vocal intensity, and with decreases in f0 over time. [21] [22] Johar argues that, "when someone is sad, slow, low pitched speech with weak high audio frequency energy is produced". Likewise, "low energy state of sadness attributes to slow tempo, lower speech rate and mean pitch". [19] : 10, 13 

Sadness is, as stated by Klaus Scherer, one of the "best-recognized emotions in the human voice", although it's "generally somewhat lower than that of facial expression". In a study by Scherer, it was found that in Western countries sadness had 79% of accuracy for facial recognition and 71% for vocal, while in Non-Western countries the results were of 74% and 58%, respectively. [23]

Cultural explorations

Lost in thoughts, by Wilhelm Amberg. An individual experiencing sadness may become quiet or lethargic, and withdraw themselves from others. Wilhelm Amberg In Gedanken versunken.jpg
Lost in thoughts, by Wilhelm Amberg. An individual experiencing sadness may become quiet or lethargic, and withdraw themselves from others.

During the Renaissance, Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queene endorsed sadness as a marker of spiritual commitment. [24]

In The Lord of the Rings , sadness is distinguished from unhappiness, [25] to exemplify J. R. R. Tolkien's preference for a sad, but settled determination, as opposed to what he saw as the shallower temptations of either despair or hope. [26]

Julia Kristeva considered that "a diversification of moods, variety in sadness, refinement in sorrow or mourning are the imprint of a humanity that is surely not triumphant but subtle, ready to fight and creative". [27]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emotion</span> Conscious subjective experience of humans

Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotions are often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, or creativity.

Amusement is the state of experiencing humorous and entertaining events or situations while the person or animal actively maintains the experience, and is associated with enjoyment, happiness, laughter and pleasure. It is an emotion with positive valence and high physiological arousal.

Sympathy is the perception of, understanding of, and reaction to the distress or need of another life form.

Attitudes are associated beliefs and behaviors towards some object. They are not stable, and because of the communication and behavior of other people, are subject to change by social influences, as well as by the individual's motivation to maintain cognitive consistency when cognitive dissonance occurs—when two attitudes or attitude and behavior conflict. Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of affective and cognitive components. It has been suggested that the inter-structural composition of an associative network can be altered by the activation of a single node. Thus, by activating an affective or emotional node, attitude change may be possible, though affective and cognitive components tend to be intertwined.

Affective neuroscience is the study of how the brain processes emotions. This field combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality, emotion, and mood. The basis of emotions and what emotions are remains an issue of debate within the field of affective neuroscience.

Reduced affect display, sometimes referred to as emotional blunting or emotional numbing, is a condition of reduced emotional reactivity in an individual. It manifests as a failure to express feelings either verbally or nonverbally, especially when talking about issues that would normally be expected to engage emotions. In this condition, expressive gestures are rare and there is little animation in facial expression or vocal inflection. Additionally, reduced affect can be symptomatic of autism, schizophrenia, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, depersonalization disorder, schizoid personality disorder or brain damage. It may also be a side effect of certain medications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Affect (psychology)</span> Experience of feeling or emotion

Affect, in psychology, refers to the underlying experience of feeling, emotion, attachment, or mood. In psychology, "affect" refers to the experience of feeling or emotion. It encompasses a wide range of emotional states and can be positive or negative. Affect is a fundamental aspect of human experience and plays a central role in many psychological theories and studies. It can be understood as a combination of three components: emotion, mood, and affectivity. In psychology, the term "affect" is often used interchangeably with several related terms and concepts, though each term may have slightly different nuances. These terms encompass: emotion, feeling, mood, emotional state, sentiment, affective state, emotional response, affective reactivity, disposition. Researchers and psychologists may employ specific terms based on their focus and the context of their work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frown</span> Facial expression

A frown is a facial expression in which the eyebrows are brought together, and the forehead is wrinkled, usually indicating displeasure, sadness or worry, or less often confusion or concentration. The appearance of a frown varies by culture. An alternative usage in North America is thought of as an expression of the mouth. In those cases when used iconically, as with an emoticon, it is entirely presented by the curve of the lips forming a down-open curve. The mouth expression is also commonly referred to in the colloquial English phrase, especially in the United States, to "turn that frown upside down" which indicates changing from sad to happy.

The facial feedback hypothesis, rooted in the conjectures of Charles Darwin and William James, is that one's facial expression directly affects their emotional experience. Specifically, physiological activation of the facial regions associated with certain emotions holds a direct effect on the elicitation of such emotional states, and the lack of or inhibition of facial activation will result in the suppression of corresponding emotional states.

The theory of constructed emotion is a theory in affective science proposed by Lisa Feldman Barrett to explain the experience and perception of emotion. The theory posits that instances of emotion are constructed predictively by the brain in the moment as needed. It draws from social construction, psychological construction, and neuroconstruction.

According to some theories, emotions are universal phenomena, albeit affected by culture. Emotions are "internal phenomena that can, but do not always, make themselves observable through expression and behavior". While some emotions are universal and are experienced in similar ways as a reaction to similar events across all cultures, other emotions show considerable cultural differences in their antecedent events, the way they are experienced, the reactions they provoke and the way they are perceived by the surrounding society. According to other theories, termed social constructionist, emotions are more deeply culturally influenced. The components of emotions are universal, but the patterns are social constructions. Some also theorize that culture is affected by the emotions of the people.

Discrete emotion theory is the claim that there is a small number of core emotions. For example, Silvan Tomkins concluded that there are nine basic affects which correspond with what we come to know as emotions: interest, enjoyment, surprise, distress, fear, anger, shame, dissmell and disgust. More recently, Carroll Izard at the University of Delaware factor analytically delineated 12 discrete emotions labeled: Interest, Joy, Surprise, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, Contempt, Self-Hostility, Fear, Shame, Shyness, and Guilt.

The Affect infusion model (AIM) is a theoretical model in the field of human psychology. Developed by social psychologist Joseph Paul Forgas in the early 1990s, it attempts to explain how affect impacts one's ability to process information. A key assertion of the AIM is that the effects of affect tend to be exacerbated in complex situations that demand substantial cognitive processing. In simpler words, as situations become more complicated and unanticipated, mood becomes more influential in driving evaluations and responses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emotion classification</span> Contrast of one emotion from another

Emotion classification, the means by which one may distinguish or contrast one emotion from another, is a contested issue in emotion research and in affective science. Researchers have approached the classification of emotions from one of two fundamental viewpoints:

  1. that emotions are discrete and fundamentally different constructs
  2. that emotions can be characterized on a dimensional basis in groupings

Emotional self-regulation or emotion regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions in a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed. It can also be defined as extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions. Emotional self-regulation belongs to the broader set of emotion regulation processes, which includes both the regulation of one's own feelings and the regulation of other people's feelings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Negative affectivity</span> Personality variable

Negative affectivity (NA), or negative affect, is a personality variable that involves the experience of negative emotions and poor self-concept. Negative affectivity subsumes a variety of negative emotions, including anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear, and nervousness. Low negative affectivity is characterized by frequent states of calmness and serenity, along with states of confidence, activeness, and great enthusiasm.

The negative-state relief model states that human beings have an innate drive to reduce negative moods. They can be reduced by engaging in any mood-elevating behaviour, including helping behaviour, as it is paired with positive value such as smiles and thank you. Thus negative mood increases helpfulness because helping others can reduce one's own bad feelings.

Affect measures are used in the study of human affect, and refer to measures obtained from self-report studies asking participants to quantify their current feelings or average feelings over a longer period of time. Even though some affect measures contain variations that allow assessment of basic predispositions to experience a certain emotion, tests for such stable traits are usually considered to be personality tests.

Emotion perception refers to the capacities and abilities of recognizing and identifying emotions in others, in addition to biological and physiological processes involved. Emotions are typically viewed as having three components: subjective experience, physical changes, and cognitive appraisal; emotion perception is the ability to make accurate decisions about another's subjective experience by interpreting their physical changes through sensory systems responsible for converting these observed changes into mental representations. The ability to perceive emotion is believed to be both innate and subject to environmental influence and is also a critical component in social interactions. How emotion is experienced and interpreted depends on how it is perceived. Likewise, how emotion is perceived is dependent on past experiences and interpretations. Emotion can be accurately perceived in humans. Emotions can be perceived visually, audibly, through smell and also through bodily sensations and this process is believed to be different from the perception of non-emotional material.

In cognitive psychology, the affect-as-information hypothesis, or 'approach', is a model of evaluative processing, postulating that affective feelings provide a source of information about objects, tasks, and decision alternatives. A goal of this approach is to understand the extent of influence that affect has on cognitive functioning. It has been proposed that affect has two major dimensions, namely affective valence and affective arousal, and in this way is an embodied source of information. Affect is thought to impact three main cognitive functions: judgement, thought processing and memory. In a variety of scenarios, the influence of affect on these processes is thought to be mediated by its effects on attention. The approach is thought to account for a wide variety of behavioural phenomena in psychology.

References

  1. ↑ Jellesma, F.C.; Vingerhoets, Ad J.J.M. (1 January 2012). "Crying in Middle Childhood: A Report on Gender Differences". Sex Roles . 67 (7): 412–21. doi:10.1007/s11199-012-0136-4. PMC   3432210 . PMID   22962516.
  2. 1 2 3 Goleman, Daniel (1996). Emotional Intelligence. London, United Kingdom. Archived from the original on 2018-06-21. Retrieved 2018-06-21.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  3. ↑ Masman, Karen (21 July 2010). The Uses of Sadness: Why Feeling Sad is No Reason Not to be Happy. Allen & Unwin. p. 8. ISBN   9781741757576.
  4. 1 2 3 Skynner, Robin; Cleese, John (1994). Families and How to Survive Them.
  5. 1 2 Brazelton, T. Berry (1992). To Listen to a Child.
  6. ↑ Fraiberg, Selma H. (1987). The Magic Years. New York, United States. p. 274.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  7. ↑ Mahler, Margaret S.; Pine, Fred; Bergman, Annl (1975). The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation . London, United Kingdom. p.  92. ISBN   9780465066599.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. ↑ Winnicott, D.W. (1973). The Child, the Family, and the Outside World. United Kingdom: Penguin Books. p. 64.
  9. ↑ Arias, Juan A.; Williams, Claire; Raghvani, Rashmi; Aghajani, Moji; Baez, Sandra; Belzung, Catherine; Booij, Linda; Busatto, Geraldo; Chiarella, Julian; Fu, Cynthia HY; Ibanez, Agustin; Liddell, Belinda J.; Lowe, Leroy; Penninx, Brenda W.J.H.; Rosa, Pedro; Kemp, Andrew H. (April 2020). "The neuroscience of sadness: A multidisciplinary synthesis and collaborative review". Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. 111: 199–228. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.01.006 . PMID   32001274.
  10. ↑ Lane, R.D.; Reiman, E.M.; Ahern, G.L.; Schwartz, G.E.; Davidson, R.J. (July 1997). "Neuroanatomical Correlates of Happiness, Sadness, and Disgust". American Journal of Psychiatry . 154 (7): 926–33. doi: 10.1176/ajp.154.7.926 . PMID   9210742.
  11. ↑ Pardo, J.V.; Pardo, P.J.; Raichle, M.E. (May 1993). "Neural correlates of self-induced dysphoria". American Journal of Psychiatry . 150 (5): 713–9. doi:10.1176/ajp.150.5.713. PMID   8480815.
  12. ↑ George, M.S.; Ketter, T.A.; Parekh, J.I.; Horwitz, B.; Herscovitch, P.; Post, R.M. (March 1995). "Brain activity during transient sadness and happiness in healthy women". American Journal of Psychiatry . 152 (3): 341–51. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.468.2440 . doi:10.1176/ajp.152.3.341. PMID   7864258.
  13. ↑ Bos, E.H.; Snippe, E.; de Jonge, P.; Jeronimus, B.F. (2016). "Preserving Subjective Wellbeing in the Face of Psychopathology: Buffering Effects of Personal Strengths and Resources". PLOS ONE. 11 (3): e0150867. Bibcode:2016PLoSO..1150867B. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0150867 . PMC   4786317 . PMID   26963923.
  14. ↑ "Why It's Import to Express Your Sadness". Free Online Therapy. October 2018. Archived from the original on 2018-11-29.
  15. ↑ Barnstone, Aliki (2000). "New England Review (1990–)". Spring . 21 (2): 19. ISSN   1053-1297. JSTOR   i40009359.
  16. ↑ Parsons, Michael (13 August 2000). The Dove that Returns, the Dove that Vanishes: Paradox and Creativity in Psychoanalysis . London, United Kingdom: Routledge. p.  4. ISBN   978-0415211826.
  17. 1 2 Harrison, Neil A.; Singer, Tania; Rotshtein, Pia; Dolan, Ray J.; Critchley, Hugo D. (1 June 2006). "Pupillary contagion: central mechanisms engaged in sadness processing". Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience . 1 (1): 5–17. doi:10.1093/scan/nsl006. PMC   1716019 . PMID   17186063.
  18. 1 2 Harrison, Neil A.; Wilson, C.E.; Critchley, H.D. (November 2007). "Processing of observed pupil size modulates perception of sadness and predicts empathy". Emotion. 7 (4): 724–9. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.7.4.724. PMID   18039039.
  19. 1 2 3 Johar, Swati (22 December 2015). Emotion, Affect and Personality in Speech: The Bias of Language and Paralanguage. SpringerBriefs in Speech Technology. Springer. ISBN   978-3-319-28047-9. Archived from the original on 21 June 2018. Retrieved 21 June 2018.
  20. ↑ Yildirim, Serdar; Bulut, Murtaza; M. Lee, Chul; Kazemzadeh, Abe; Busso, Carlos; Deng, Zhigang; Lee, Sungbok; Narayanan, Shrikanth (2004). "An acoustic study of emotions expressed in speech" (PDF). ISCA : 1. Retrieved 20 June 2018.
  21. ↑ Stolarski, Łukasz (2015). "Pitch Patterns in Vocal Expression of "Happiness" and "Sadness" in the Reading Aloud of Prose on the Basis of Selected Audiobooks". Research in Language. 13 (2): 141–162. doi: 10.1515/rela-2015-0016 . hdl: 11089/17230 . S2CID   52998542.
  22. ↑ Bachorowski, Jo-Anne (20 April 1999). "Vocal Expression and Perception of Emotion" (PDF). Current Directions in Psychological Science . 8 (2): 53–57. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.00013. S2CID   18785659. Archived (PDF) from the original on 30 August 2017. Retrieved 21 June 2018.
  23. ↑ Scherer, Klaus R. (2003). "Vocal communication of emotion: A review of research paradigms". Speech Communication. 40 (1–2): 235–6. doi:10.1016/S0167-6393(02)00084-5. S2CID   8777381.
  24. ↑ Trevor, Douglas (30 September 2004). The Poetics of Melancholy in Early Modern England. Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. p. 48. ISBN   9780521834698.
  25. ↑ Tolkien, J.R.R. (1991). The Lord of the Rings. London, United Kingdom: HarperCollins. p. 475. ISBN   9780261102309.
  26. ↑ Sippey, Tom A. (1992). The Road to Middle-Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. London, United Kingdom: HarperCollins. p. 143. ISBN   9780261102750.
  27. ↑ Phillips, Adam (1994). On Flirtation. London, United Kingdom: Harvard University Press. p. 87. ISBN   9780674634404. Archived from the original on 2018-06-21. Retrieved 2018-06-21.

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