Health

Why Do We Listen to Sad Songs?

Published

2 years ago

May 19, 2023

In the second part of the experiment, involving 450 new subjects, the researchers gave each participant 72 descriptions of emotional songs, which expressed feelings including “contempt,” “narcissism,” “inspiration” and “lustfulness.” For comparison, they also gave participants prompts that described a conversational interaction in which someone expressed their feelings. (For example: “An acquaintance is talking to you about their week and expresses feelings of wistfulness.”) On the whole, the emotions that subjects felt were deeply rooted to “what music is all about” were also those that made people feel more connected to one another in conversation: love, joy, loneliness, sadness, ecstasy, calmness, sorrow.

Mario Attie-Picker, a philosopher at Loyola University Chicago who helped lead the research, found the results compelling. After considering the data, he proposed a relatively simple idea: Maybe we listen to music not for an emotional reaction — many subjects reported that sad music, albeit artistic, was not particularly enjoyable — but for the sense of connection to others. Applied to the paradox of sad music: Our love of the music is not a direct appreciation of sadness, it’s an appreciation of connection. Dr. Knobe and Dr. Venkatesan were quickly on board.

“I’m a believer already,” Dr. Eerola said when he was alerted to the study. In his own research, he has found that particularly empathetic people are more likely to be moved by unfamiliar sad music. “They’re willing to engage in this kind of fictional sadness that the music is bringing them,” he said. These people also display more significant hormonal changes in response to sad music.

But sad music is layered — it’s an onion — and this explanation prompts more questions. With whom are we connecting? The artist? Our past selves? An imaginary person? And how can sad music be “all about” anything? Doesn’t the power of art derive, in part, from its ability to transcend summary, to expand experience?

One by one, the researchers acknowledged the complexity of their subject, and the limitations of existing work. And then Dr. Attie-Picker offered a less philosophical argument for their results: “It just feels right,” he said.

Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.

Health

Semaglutide Pills and Injections Vs. Drops: Experts Weigh In | Woman's World

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1 hour ago

January 18, 2025

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Semaglutide Pills and Injections Vs. Drops: Experts Weigh In | Woman’s World

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Jennifer Hudson Lost 80-Lbs Without Depriving Herself—Learn Her Secrets

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9 hours ago

January 18, 2025

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Jennifer Hudson Lost 80-Lbs Without Depriving Herself—Learn Her Secrets

Jennifer Hudson’s Weight Loss: How She Shed 80-Lbs Naturally | Woman’s World

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Kennedy’s Plan for the Drug Crisis: A Network of ‘Healing Farms’

Published

17 hours ago

January 18, 2025

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Kennedy’s Plan for the Drug Crisis: A Network of ‘Healing Farms’

Though Mr. Kennedy’s embrace of recovery farms may be novel, the concept stretches back almost a century. In 1935, the government opened the United States Narcotic Farm in Lexington, Ky., to research and treat addiction. Over the years, residents included Chet Baker and William S. Burroughs (who portrayed the institution in his novel, “Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict”). The program had high relapse rates and was tainted by drug experiments on human subjects. By 1975, as local treatment centers began to proliferate around the country, the program closed.

In America, therapeutic communities for addiction treatment became popular in the 1960s and ’70s. Some, like Synanon, became notorious for cultlike, abusive environments. There are now perhaps 3,000 worldwide, researchers estimate, including one that Mr. Kennedy has also praised — San Patrignano, an Italian program whose centerpiece is a highly regarded bakery, staffed by residents.

“If we do go down the road of large government-funded therapeutic communities, I’d want to see some oversight to ensure they live up to modern standards,” said Dr. Sabet, who is now president of the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions. “We should get rid of the false dichotomy, too, between these approaches and medications, since we know they can work together for some people.”

Should Mr. Kennedy be confirmed, his authority to establish healing farms would be uncertain. Building federal treatment farms in “depressed rural areas,” as he said in his documentary, presumably on public land, would hit political and legal roadblocks. Fully legalizing and taxing cannabis to pay for the farms would require congressional action.

In the concluding moments of the documentary, Mr. Kennedy invoked Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist whose views on spirituality influenced Alcoholics Anonymous. Dr. Jung, he said, felt that “people who believed in God got better faster and that their recovery was more durable and enduring than people who didn’t.”