Sadness Information

Sadness is emotional pain associated with, or characterized by feelings of disadvantage, loss, despair, helplessness, sorrow, and rage. When sad, people often become outspoken, less energetic, and emotional. Crying is an indication of sadness.

Sadness can be viewed as a temporary lowering of mood, whereas depression is characterized by a persistent and intense lowered mood, as well as disruption to one's ability to function in day to day matters.

Sadness is one of Paul Ekman's "six basic emotions - happy, sad, angry, surprised, afraid, disgusted".^[1]

In childhood

'Being sad is a common experience in childhood...If faced openly, sadness can help families become stronger and more able to handle painful feelings'.^[2] On the other hand, some families may have the (conscious or unconscious) rule: 'No sadness allowed...we were not allowed to be sad...a matter of family pride'.^[3] The problem may then be that 'that screened-off emotion isn't available to us when we need it....the loss of sadness makes us a bit manic'.^[4]

Sadness is part of the normal process of the child separating from an early symbiosis with the mother and becoming more independent. 'Every time he separates just a tiny bit more, he'll have to cope with a small loss. He'll have to get sad for a little bit'; and if the mother cannot bear this, 'if she dashes right in to relieve the child's distress every single time he shows any...the child is not getting a chance to learn how to cope with sadness'.^[5] This is why 'trying to jostle or joke out of a sad mood is devaluing to her'^[6] or him: 'we need to respect a child's right to experience a loss fully and deeply'.^[7]

At the same time, it seems clear that 'Sadness, however, seems to require a great deal of strength to bear', and a child in self-protection may develop 'hyperactivity or restlessness...as an early defensive activity against awareness of the painful affect of sadness'.^[8] This is why D. W. Winnicott suggests that 'when your infant shows that he can cry from sadness you can infer that he has travelled a long way in the development of his feelings....some people think that sad crying is one of the main roots of the more valuable kind of music'.^[9]

Coping mechanisms

'The single mood people generally put most effort into shaking is sadness...Unfortunately, some of the strategies most often resorted to can backfire, leaving people feeling worse than before. One such strategy is simply staying alone'.^[10] Ruminating, and "drowning one's sorrows", may also be counterproductive.

Two more positive alternatives have been recommended by cognitive therapy. 'One is to learn to challenge the thoughts at the center of rumination and think of more positive alternatives. The other is to purposely schedule pleasant, distracting events'.^[11]

Object relations theory by contrast stresses the utility of staying with sadness: 'it's got to be conveyed to the person that it's all right for him to have the sad feelings' - easiest done perhaps 'where emotional support is offered to help them begin to feel the sadness'.^[12] Such an approach is fuelled by the underlying belief that 'the capacity to bear loss wholeheartedly, without pushing the experience away, emerges...as essential to being truly alive and engaged with the world'.^[13]

Pupil empathy

Facial expressions of sadness with small pupils are judged significantly more intensely sad with decreasing pupil size. A person's own pupil size also mirrors this with them being smaller when viewing sad faces with small pupils. No parallel effect exists when people look at neutral, happy or angry expressions.^[14] The greater degree to which a person's pupils mirror another predicts a person's greater score on empathy.^[15]

Cultural explorations

• During the Renaissance, "Edmund Spenser's high estimation of sadness renders it as a badge of sort for the spiritually elect...this endorsement of sadness"^[16] in The Fairie Queene.
• In The Lord of the Rings, Treebeard is described as having "a sad look in his eyes, sad but not unhappy".^[17] This may be linked to the way "an early meaning of 'sad' is 'settled, determined'", exemplifying "Tolkien's theses that determination should survive the worst that can happen".^[18]
• 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'.^[19]

See also

• Coping (psychology)
• Coping skill
• Coping strategies
• Depression (mood)
• Happiness
• Mood (psychology)

References

1. ^ Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (London 1996) p. 271
2. ^ T. Berry Brazleton, To Listen to a Child (1992) p. 46 and p. 48
3. ^ Masman, p. 8
4. ^ Skynner/Cleese, p. 33 and p. 36
5. ^ Skynner/Cleese, p. 158-9
6. ^ Brazleton, p. 52
7. ^ Selma H. Fraiberg, The Magic Years (New York 1987) p. 274
8. ^ M. Mahler et al, The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant (London 1975) p. 92
9. ^ D. W. Winnicott, The Child, the Family, and the Outside World (Penguin 1973) p. 64
10. ^ Goleman, p. 69-70
11. ^ Goleman, p. 72
12. ^ Skynner/Cleese, p. 164
13. ^ Michael Parsons, The Dove that Returns, the Dove that Vanishes (London 2000) p. 4
14. ^ Harrison NA, Singer T, Rotshtein P, Dolan RJ, Critchley HD (June 2006). "Pupillary contagion: central mechanisms engaged in sadness processing". Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 1 (1): 5–17. doi:10.1093/scan/nsl006. PMC 1716019. PMID 17186063. http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=17186063.
15. ^ Harrison NA, Wilson CE, Critchley HD (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. http://content.apa.org/journals/emo/7/4/724.
16. ^ Douglas Trevor, The Poetics of Melancholy in early modern England (Cambridge 2004) p. 48
17. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (London 1991) p. 475
18. ^ T. A Shippey, The Road to Middle-Earth (London 1992) p. 143
19. ^ Quoted in Adam Phillips, On Flirtation (London 1994) p. 87

Further reading

• David Allen Karp, Speaking of Sadness (1997)
• Keltner D, Ellsworth PC, Edwards K (May 1993). "Beyond simple pessimism: effects of sadness and anger on social perception". J Pers Soc Psychol 64 (5): 740–52. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.64.5.740. PMID 8505705. http://content.apa.org/journals/psp/64/5/740.
• Tiedens LZ (January 2001). "Anger and advancement versus sadness and subjugation: the effect of negative emotion expressions on social status conferral". J Pers Soc Psychol 80 (1): 86–94. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.80.1.86. PMID 11195894. http://content.apa.org/journals/psp/80/1/86.
• Ambady & Gray, 2002
• Forgas JP (March 1998). "On feeling good and getting your way: mood effects on negotiator cognition and bargaining strategies". J Pers Soc Psychol 74 (3): 565–77. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.74.3.565. PMID 11407408. http://content.apa.org/journals/psp/74/3/565.
• Forgas JP (August 1998). "On being happy and mistaken: mood effects on the fundamental attribution error". J Pers Soc Psychol 75 (2): 318–31. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.75.2.318. PMID 9731311. http://content.apa.org/journals/psp/75/2/318.
• Forgas JP (1994). "The role of emotion in social judgments: an introductory review and an Affect Infusion Model (AIM)". Eur J Soc Psychol 24 (1): 1–24. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420240102.
• Forgas JP, Bower GH (July 1987). "Mood effects on person-perception judgments". J Pers Soc Psychol 53 (1): 53–60. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.53.1.53. PMID 3612493. http://content.apa.org/journals/psp/53/1/53.
• Isen AM, Daubman KA, Nowicki GP (June 1987). "Positive affect facilitates creative problem solving". J Pers Soc Psychol 52 (6): 1122–31. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.52.6.1122. PMID 3598858. http://content.apa.org/journals/psp/52/6/1122.
• Keltner et al., 1998

External links

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• Emotions
• Personal life
• Grief

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