In the second part of the experiment, involving 450 new subjects, the researchers gave each participant 72 emotional song descriptions, which expressed feelings such as “contempt”, “narcissism”, “inspiration” and “lust”. For comparison, they also gave participants prompts describing a conversational interaction in which someone expressed their feelings. (For example: “An acquaintance talks to you about her week and expresses feelings of nostalgia.”) Overall, the emotions the subjects felt were deeply rooted in “what music is” were also ones that made people felt more connected to each other in conversation: love, joy, loneliness, sadness, ecstasy, calm, grief.
Mario Attie-Picker, a Loyola University Chicago philosopher who helped lead the research, found the results compelling. After reviewing the data, he came up with a relatively simple idea: perhaps we listen to music not for an emotional reaction – many subjects reported that sad music, while artistic, was not particularly nice – but for the feeling of connection to others. Applied to the paradox of sad music: Our love of music is not a direct appreciation of sadness, it is an appreciation of connection. Dr. Knobe and Dr. Venkatesan quickly boarded.
“I’m already a believer,” Dr. Eerola said when alerted to the study. In his own research, he discovered that particularly empathetic people are more likely to be moved by an unknown sad music. “They’re ready to engage in that kind of fictional sadness that music brings to them,” he said. These people also display more significant hormonal changes in response to sad music.
But the sad music is superimposed – it’s an onion – and this explanation raises more questions. Who are we in contact with? 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 the abstract, to expand the experience?
One by one, the researchers recognized the complexity of their subject, and the limits of existing work. And then Dr. Attie-Picker offered a less philosophical argument for their findings: “It feels good,” he said.
Sound produced by Adrian Hurst.