We commend the authors of the target article for their comprehensive analysis of the many factors that contribute to the aesthetic enjoyment of negative emotion. However, without discounting the importance of these factors, we wish to contend – particularly in the case of musical emotion – the authors' claim that “it is not sadness qua sadness as a negative emotion that is liked and that contributes to aesthetic appreciation” (sect. 4.2.1, para. 6) (for a similar claim see Juslin Reference Juslin2013, p. 258; cf. Vuoskoski & Eerola Reference Vuoskoski and Eerola2017). According to their Distancing-Embracing model, it is not the negative emotions themselves that are enjoyed, but rather the way in which they combine with other emotions so as to enhance the overall aesthetic experience. But in many cases of musical enjoyment, we believe that sadness itself is enjoyed. Here we provide reasons for considering musically induced sadness as enjoyable in itself and suggest ways in which current and future research in neuroscience and psychology might help shed light on this possibility.
First, the notion that “distancing” is required for the aesthetic “embrace” of an otherwise unpleasant negative emotion does not fit well with experiences of negative emotions in music. On the contrary, listeners and performers of music seem to enjoy negative emotions precisely to the extent that they are powerfully affected by these feelings. The pleasure of musical immersion in negative emotion is supported by numerous accounts of strong musical experiences (Gabrielsson Reference Gabrielsson and Bradbury2011), as well as a recent study that indicates that the enjoyment of sadness in music is strongly linked to “being moved” by sadness (Vuoskoski & Eerola Reference Vuoskoski and Eerola2017). Furthermore, there is no evidence from self-report studies that subjects find musically induced feelings of sadness to be unpleasant in themselves and, thus, in need of “distancing” (e.g. Taruffi & Koelsch Reference Taruffi and Koelsch2014; Vuoskoski et al. Reference Vuoskoski, Thompson, McIlwain and Eerola2012).
The idea that musical sadness can be enjoyable in itself is also the most parsimonious approach to the “paradox” of enjoyable sadness, as it targets the feeling itself and does not require that sadness is combined with other emotions or that it functions to restore “homeostatic balance” (Sachs et al. Reference Sachs, Damasio and Habibi2015). Why, then, is this idea rejected by psychologists of music (e.g., Juslin Reference Juslin2013)? The most likely reason is that the idea of enjoyable sadness seems oxymoronic, given that sadness is essentially negative. But this assumption can be questioned on both phenomenological and scientific grounds.
From a phenomenological perspective, the difficulty of pinpointing the “negativity” of negative emotions like sadness suggests that it is complexly constructed and cannot be reduced to a single factor. In particular, it seems that whatever felt qualities support the categorical discrimination of an emotion (e.g., as sad, happy), these qualities are separable from the affective tone that normally accompanies and is typically associated with this emotion. This is the upshot of the philosophical literature on affect, which finds that the specifically affective component of pleasurable and painful feelings is not marked by any essential phenomenal quality (e.g., see Aydede Reference Aydede2014). Likewise, from a scientific perspective, although we do not have a widely accepted neurocognitive model of affect (see Lindquist et al. Reference Lindquist, Satpute, Wager, Weber and Barrett2016 for a review), evidence from a variety of sources indicates that negative affective tone is a variable ingredient in feelings that we commonly categorize as negative. The most striking example of this affective variability is pain. Regardless of how feelings of pain are typically experienced, any attempt to define pain as essentially negative is confronted by a wide variety of cases in which its negative affect is attenuated, absent, or even reversed (Glucklich Reference Glucklich2001; Grahek Reference Grahek2007). For example, a recent study demonstrated that, depending on context, moderate pain could be experienced as positive, a phenomenon the authors term “hedonic flip” (Leknes et al. Reference Leknes, Berna, Lee, Snyder, Biele and Tracey2013). Affective reversibility might be explained by findings that pain and pleasure are controlled by the same brain areas – the nucleus accumbens, globus pallidus, and amygdala – and thus might belong to a common affective currency that can be modulated independently of other components of emotional experience (Leknes & Tracey Reference Leknes and Tracy2008). Interestingly, these same brain areas have been related to the pleasure of listening to sad music (Sachs et al. Reference Sachs, Damasio and Habibi2015). Again, we do not yet have a solid neurocognitive model of affect, but the upshot of pain research seems to be that feelings of pain are complex and context sensitive and, moreover, that the feeling of pain itself can change in respect of affective tone. Should not we expect the same of sadness?
Even if we accept that sadness can be transmuted by music into something enjoyable, this process is still in need of explanation. Drawing from recent research on the “complexity” or “granularity” of emotion (Barrett et al. Reference Barrett, Gross, Christensen and Benvenuto2001, Kashdan et al. Reference Kashdan, Barrett and McKnight2015; Lee et al. Reference Lee, Lindquist and Nam2017; Lindquist & Barrett Reference Lindquist, Barrett, Lewis, Haviland-Jones and Barrett2008; Smidt & Suvak Reference Smidt and Suvak2015), we have recently proposed that the enjoyment of sadness itself in music could be explained if it could be shown that musically induced emotions are more finely differentiated than normally induced emotions (see Barrett & Schulkin, Reference Barrett and Schulkinunder review). Felix Mendelssohn famously observed that our experience of emotion in music is “too precise for words.” This statement suggests that emotions are not just triggered by music, but rendered in highly differentiated form. Meanwhile, research on emotional granularity indicates that the fine differentiation of negative emotions alters their negative affect (Kashdan et al. Reference Kashdan, Barrett and McKnight2015), although we are the first to suggest that high granularity can cause affective reversal. In any case, the role of emotional granularity in musical experience calls for further investigation: to our knowledge, no empirical study of musical enjoyment has focused on emotional granularity. The challenge is to find ways of comparing the granularity of musically induced versus normally induced sadness in the same individual, either through self-reports or through direct measures of neural activity (e.g., electroencephalogram). So far, no methods for the direct measurement of emotional granularity exist, but see Lee et al. (Reference Lee, Lindquist and Nam2017) for an exploratory study of the effects of emotional granularity on emotional processing.
We commend the authors of the target article for their comprehensive analysis of the many factors that contribute to the aesthetic enjoyment of negative emotion. However, without discounting the importance of these factors, we wish to contend – particularly in the case of musical emotion – the authors' claim that “it is not sadness qua sadness as a negative emotion that is liked and that contributes to aesthetic appreciation” (sect. 4.2.1, para. 6) (for a similar claim see Juslin Reference Juslin2013, p. 258; cf. Vuoskoski & Eerola Reference Vuoskoski and Eerola2017). According to their Distancing-Embracing model, it is not the negative emotions themselves that are enjoyed, but rather the way in which they combine with other emotions so as to enhance the overall aesthetic experience. But in many cases of musical enjoyment, we believe that sadness itself is enjoyed. Here we provide reasons for considering musically induced sadness as enjoyable in itself and suggest ways in which current and future research in neuroscience and psychology might help shed light on this possibility.
First, the notion that “distancing” is required for the aesthetic “embrace” of an otherwise unpleasant negative emotion does not fit well with experiences of negative emotions in music. On the contrary, listeners and performers of music seem to enjoy negative emotions precisely to the extent that they are powerfully affected by these feelings. The pleasure of musical immersion in negative emotion is supported by numerous accounts of strong musical experiences (Gabrielsson Reference Gabrielsson and Bradbury2011), as well as a recent study that indicates that the enjoyment of sadness in music is strongly linked to “being moved” by sadness (Vuoskoski & Eerola Reference Vuoskoski and Eerola2017). Furthermore, there is no evidence from self-report studies that subjects find musically induced feelings of sadness to be unpleasant in themselves and, thus, in need of “distancing” (e.g. Taruffi & Koelsch Reference Taruffi and Koelsch2014; Vuoskoski et al. Reference Vuoskoski, Thompson, McIlwain and Eerola2012).
The idea that musical sadness can be enjoyable in itself is also the most parsimonious approach to the “paradox” of enjoyable sadness, as it targets the feeling itself and does not require that sadness is combined with other emotions or that it functions to restore “homeostatic balance” (Sachs et al. Reference Sachs, Damasio and Habibi2015). Why, then, is this idea rejected by psychologists of music (e.g., Juslin Reference Juslin2013)? The most likely reason is that the idea of enjoyable sadness seems oxymoronic, given that sadness is essentially negative. But this assumption can be questioned on both phenomenological and scientific grounds.
From a phenomenological perspective, the difficulty of pinpointing the “negativity” of negative emotions like sadness suggests that it is complexly constructed and cannot be reduced to a single factor. In particular, it seems that whatever felt qualities support the categorical discrimination of an emotion (e.g., as sad, happy), these qualities are separable from the affective tone that normally accompanies and is typically associated with this emotion. This is the upshot of the philosophical literature on affect, which finds that the specifically affective component of pleasurable and painful feelings is not marked by any essential phenomenal quality (e.g., see Aydede Reference Aydede2014). Likewise, from a scientific perspective, although we do not have a widely accepted neurocognitive model of affect (see Lindquist et al. Reference Lindquist, Satpute, Wager, Weber and Barrett2016 for a review), evidence from a variety of sources indicates that negative affective tone is a variable ingredient in feelings that we commonly categorize as negative. The most striking example of this affective variability is pain. Regardless of how feelings of pain are typically experienced, any attempt to define pain as essentially negative is confronted by a wide variety of cases in which its negative affect is attenuated, absent, or even reversed (Glucklich Reference Glucklich2001; Grahek Reference Grahek2007). For example, a recent study demonstrated that, depending on context, moderate pain could be experienced as positive, a phenomenon the authors term “hedonic flip” (Leknes et al. Reference Leknes, Berna, Lee, Snyder, Biele and Tracey2013). Affective reversibility might be explained by findings that pain and pleasure are controlled by the same brain areas – the nucleus accumbens, globus pallidus, and amygdala – and thus might belong to a common affective currency that can be modulated independently of other components of emotional experience (Leknes & Tracey Reference Leknes and Tracy2008). Interestingly, these same brain areas have been related to the pleasure of listening to sad music (Sachs et al. Reference Sachs, Damasio and Habibi2015). Again, we do not yet have a solid neurocognitive model of affect, but the upshot of pain research seems to be that feelings of pain are complex and context sensitive and, moreover, that the feeling of pain itself can change in respect of affective tone. Should not we expect the same of sadness?
Even if we accept that sadness can be transmuted by music into something enjoyable, this process is still in need of explanation. Drawing from recent research on the “complexity” or “granularity” of emotion (Barrett et al. Reference Barrett, Gross, Christensen and Benvenuto2001, Kashdan et al. Reference Kashdan, Barrett and McKnight2015; Lee et al. Reference Lee, Lindquist and Nam2017; Lindquist & Barrett Reference Lindquist, Barrett, Lewis, Haviland-Jones and Barrett2008; Smidt & Suvak Reference Smidt and Suvak2015), we have recently proposed that the enjoyment of sadness itself in music could be explained if it could be shown that musically induced emotions are more finely differentiated than normally induced emotions (see Barrett & Schulkin, Reference Barrett and Schulkinunder review). Felix Mendelssohn famously observed that our experience of emotion in music is “too precise for words.” This statement suggests that emotions are not just triggered by music, but rendered in highly differentiated form. Meanwhile, research on emotional granularity indicates that the fine differentiation of negative emotions alters their negative affect (Kashdan et al. Reference Kashdan, Barrett and McKnight2015), although we are the first to suggest that high granularity can cause affective reversal. In any case, the role of emotional granularity in musical experience calls for further investigation: to our knowledge, no empirical study of musical enjoyment has focused on emotional granularity. The challenge is to find ways of comparing the granularity of musically induced versus normally induced sadness in the same individual, either through self-reports or through direct measures of neural activity (e.g., electroencephalogram). So far, no methods for the direct measurement of emotional granularity exist, but see Lee et al. (Reference Lee, Lindquist and Nam2017) for an exploratory study of the effects of emotional granularity on emotional processing.