Table Of ContentWhy Are We
Attracted to Sad Music?
Sandra Garrido
Why Are We Attracted to Sad Music?
Sandra Garrido
Why Are We
Attracted to Sad
Music?
Sandra Garrido
MARCS Institute for Brain Behaviour and Development
Western Sydney University
Milperra, NSW, Australia
ISBN 978-3-319-39665-1 ISBN 978-3-319-39666-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39666-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957737
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Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 What Is Sad Music? 7
3 The Philosophical Debate 33
4 Physiological Effects of Sad Music 51
5 A Historical Overview of Music and Mood Regulation 67
6 The Role of Sad Music in Mood Regulation 87
7 Individual Differences in the Attraction to Sad Music 101
8 Mood Regulation Disorders: An Exception to Mood
Management Theory? 129
9 Musical Prescriptions: Do They Work? 149
v
vi Contents
10 Listening Context: Group Rumination and Emotional
Contagion 171
11 Nostalgia and Mixed Emotions in Response to Music 189
12 The Addiction of Love: Sad Music and Heartbreak 213
13 The Role of Sad Music in Grief 233
14 Towards A Model for Understanding Sad Music Listening 253
Index 267
About the Author
Sandra Garrido is a researcher in music psychology, a pianist and vio-
linist and the mother of two small boys. After completing her PhD, she
spent several years in research at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music
and the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for the
History of Emotions. She is currently a Dementia Research Fellow at the
MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development at Western
Sydney University. She has authored over 30 academic publications and
co-authored a book entitled My Life As A Playlist (2014).
vii
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Sadness adjectives in a 2-dimensional model showing the
median term values. (Circle size indicates the relative
proportion of participants who selected the term) 16
Fig. 8.1 Changes in POMS depression scores for low and high
ruminators 134
Fig. 9.1 Mood impact of happy and sad playlists on high and low
ruminators 154
Fig. 14.1 A model of attraction to sad music 262
Fig. 14.2 A pathway model of sad music and its impact on mood 263
ix
1
Introduction
Many of us who love music generally have no difficulty believing in its
power to stir the heart and change our mood. However, popular beliefs in
the mind-altering power of music tend to fall into two divergent camps:
a passionate optimism about the universally beneficial effects of music on
the listener, or an equally fervent belief that music—particularly unfamil-
iar music—is a tool of evil by which the young and impressionable can be
induced to aggression, violence and self-harm.
Key minds throughout the centuries, however, have argued for a more
balanced viewpoint with regard to music’s effect on the listener. Aristotle
(384–322 BC), for example, argued that for some people music can
“excite the soul to a mystic frenzy”, while others would “find their souls
lightened and delighted” or would enjoy “an innocent pleasure” in the
music (Politics, Book VIII, Section VII). Aristotle argued, therefore, that
music of all rhythmic and tonal modes should be employed, “but not all
of them in the same manner”. In other words, Aristotle acknowledged
that different musical features had different effects on the mood, and
that these effects would vary from individual to individual. Similarly,
Dr Robert Burton, a seventeenth-century medical practitioner, wrote in
his book Anatomy of Melancholy that some music can “make melancholy
© The Author(s) 2017 1
S. Garrido, Why Are We Attracted to Sad Music?,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39666-8_1
2 Why Are We Attracted to Sad Music?
persons mad”, while others may experience a “pleasing melancholy” when
listening to music which “expels care, alters their grieved mind and easeth
in an instant” (Memb VI, Subs III). Apparently based on his own experi-
ences, Burton here recognizes the fact that experiences of melancholy in
music can be pleasant at times, but can have an unpleasant effect at other
times or in other individuals.
Tragedy was a popular art form in ancient Greece during the time of
Aristotle. Tens of thousands of people in ancient Greece would pack the
arenas of large cities to witness popular tragedies Similarly, the seven-
teenth century, in which Robert Burton lived, witnessed a period known
as ‘Elizabethan melancholy’, in which melancholic afflictions seemed
to be widespread and a general preoccupation with melancholic topics
could be observed in the arts. While music itself, as well as our ways of
interacting with it, have changed a great deal since the time of Aristotle,
or indeed, of Robert Burton, their words cited above suggest a response
to music that that has considerable similarities with what we experience
today. While we might not think of it as a “mystic frenzy”, some modern
music genres, such as electronic trance, are specifically designed to induce
dissociative, trance-like states in the listener or in dancers (Becker-Blease,
2004). The phenomenon of feeling pleasant emotions when listening to
sad music is also acknowledged by many music listeners in the twenty-
first century (Kawakami, Furukawa, Katahira, & Okanoya, 2013).
In fact, it is the attraction to “melancholy” music, in particular, that is
the focus of this volume. The mystery of why we are attracted to sad music
is a particularly fascinating paradox that has puzzled philosophers for
centuries, with very little empirical research on the subject until the last
decade. ‘Negative’ emotions such as sadness are generally held to involve
avoidance behaviours according to most models of emotion, impelling us
to escape from situations or people that make us feel sad, thus protecting
us from potential danger. We could expect, therefore, that people would
usually display a preference for listening to happy music. Research sup-
ports this idea, with findings that people do mostly prefer to listen to
uptempo music in major keys, music which is usually perceived as happy
(Husain, Thompson, & Schellenberg, 2002; Thompson, Schellenberg,
& Husain, 2001). Counterintuitively, however, in the case of music or
other aesthetic experiences, the evidence suggests that we also willingly
