Here’s why sad music can help you feel better

At some point in our lives, we’ve all turned to sad music to help us feel better. But why does doubling down on the sadness help us get out of the muck?

A new study gives us more information about what’s going on in our brains when we match our music to how we’re feeling. It seems that sad music can be enjoyable instead of just depressing because it makes us think of happy memories that help us feel better.

The study, which was done by researchers at Durham University in the UK and the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland, looked at the results of three large surveys with a total of 2,436 people. They found that people’s reactions to sad songs fell on a wide range.

But there were three main responses that stood out: pleasure, comfort, and pain. The researchers found that these reactions were often brought on by happy or sad memories that the music brought back.

Adrian North, a psychologist at Curtin University in Australia who wasn’t involved in the new study, says there are two possible reasons why we like to listen to sad music like this. One comes from social psychology, and the other comes from cognitive neuroscience.

In terms of social psychology, one way to think about this is that we feel better about ourselves when we focus on someone who is doing even worse. This is a well-known process called downward social comparison. Everything will be fine, because Thom Yorke is having a day that is even worse than yours.

Another idea from social psychology is that people like to listen to music that matches the tone of their current lives. The songs act as a kind of tuning fork for our own lives, and they make sense to us.

North thinks that the second set of options is more likely to be true because they are based on neuroscience and the chemical processes that are really going on in our minds.

Some scientists think that sad music might have something to do with the hormone prolactin, which is a chemical that makes people feel less sad. The body is basically getting ready to deal with a traumatic event, and when that event doesn’t happen, the body is left with a mix of opiates that feel good but have nowhere else to go.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is released when we eat, have sex, or take drugs. Brain scans have shown that dopamine is released when we listen to music at certain emotional high points. It’s possible that this is where the pleasure comes from when we listen to sad music.

Another theory says that our minds deal with sadness in a different way when we experience it through art instead of directly. For example, when we see a sad movie, hear a sad song, or look at a sad painting.

Research from 2014 showed that people tend to like sad music because they think it’s pretty. A new study from the UK and Finland found that people like sad music more because they think it looks better.

That might have something to do with the link between being sad and making famous art: some research shows that a melancholy personality leads to more appealing works of art, if you can judge art objectively. Sadness seems to make us more focused and careful, which could change the way we listen to and make music.

One thing is for sure: this kind of pleasant sadness doesn’t affect everyone the same way. The people who wrote the new study found that for some people, sad songs were actually upsetting and bad, usually because they brought back bad memories. This means that a sad soundtrack may not always be the best way to cheer up a friend.