Countless thinkers since Aristotle have tried to answer the paradox: while in real life we ​​don’t like to be sad, we do enjoy it. art what makes us feel this way. Some claim it can help us experience cleansing. negative emotions us. Others may be socially programmed to enjoy our sadness. However, the fact remains that the feeling of sadness is one of the most dominant in art, and we often seem to consciously seek to experience it in it.

Three categories

Dr. Knobe, professor of psychology at Yale University, has spent years studying the problem of sad music and the emotions it evokes in us. His research shows that our emotional response to music is multi-layered—we’re not just happy when we hear beautiful music. songnor just sad when we hear sad. In 2016, a survey of 363 listeners found that our emotional reactions to sad songs fall roughly into three categories: sadness, which includes strong negative emotions such as anger and despair, and melancholia, which is a milder form of sadness combined with negative feelings about yourself, and in happiness, a comforting feeling of joy and reconciliation with sadness.

But Knub makes a bolder observation. We like sad music because it connects us to the sadness of others. It brings us back to a pre-social state of empathy and identification with the deepest and most universal human emotions. And it makes us feel less alone. “There are times when you feel like you are alone, isolated. And then you pick up a book or listen to music and suddenly you realize that you are not alone,” he says. “Perhaps we end up listening to sad music not because we enjoy being sad, but because we want to feel connected,” he continues.

However, enjoying sad music is as multi-layered as an onion, and this explanation raises more questions. Who are we contacting? With an artist? With the “other” self? With an imaginary face?

Dr. Nobe understands the complexity of the matter and does not want to jump to conclusions. In addition, music can evoke much stronger emotions: love, joy, ecstasy, peace. “The language of emotions is the simplest, most primitive language in which we can communicate with other people without the use of words,” he concludes.