Professional Documents
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Sadness
Sadness
Sadness
A detail of the 1672 sculpture Entombment of Christ, showing Mary Magdalene crying
Childhood
People deal with sadness in different ways, and it is an important emotion because it helps to
motivate people to deal with their situation. Some coping mechanisms include: getting social
support and/or spending time with a pet,[12] creating a list, or engaging in some activity to
express sadness.[13] Some individuals, when feeling sad, may exclude themselves from a
social setting, so as to take the time to recover from the feeling.
While being one of the moods people most want to shake, sadness can sometimes be
perpetuated by the very coping strategies chosen, such as ruminating, "drowning one's
sorrows", or permanently isolating oneself.[2]:69–70 As alternative ways of coping with
sadness to the above, cognitive behavioral therapysuggests instead either challenging one's
negative thoughts, or scheduling some positive event as a distraction.[2]:72
Being attentive to, and patient with, one's sadness may also be a way for people to learn
through solitude;[14] while emotional support to help people stay with their sadness can be
further helpful.[4]:164 Such an approach is fueled by the underlying belief that loss (when felt
wholeheartedly) can lead to a new sense of aliveness, and to a re-engagement with the outside
world.[15]
Pupil empathy
Pupil size may be an indicator of sadness. A sad facial expression with small pupils is judged
to be more intensely sad as the pupil size decreases.[16] A person's own pupil size
also mirrors this and becomes smaller when viewing sad faces with small pupils. No parallel
effect exists when people look at neutral, happy or angry expressions.[16] The greater degree
to which a person's pupils mirror another predicts a person's greater score
on empathy.[17] However, in disorders such as autism and psychopathy facial expressions that
represent sadness may be subtle, which may show a need for a more non-linguistic situation
to affect their level of empathy.[17]
Vocal patterns
According to Swati Johar, sadness is an emotion "identified by current speech dialogue and
processing systems".[18]:12 Root mean square(RMS) energy, inter-word silence and speaking
rate were noted as useful measurements in distinguishing sadness from other emotions.[19]It's
communicated mostly by lowering the variability of the fundamental frequency.[20] Johar
argues that, "when someone is sad, slow, low pitched speech with weak high audio
frequency energy is produced". Likewise, "low energy state of sadness attributes to slow
tempo, lower speech rate and mean pitch".[18]:10; 13
Sadness is, as stated by Klaus Scherer, one of the "best-recognized emotions in the [human]
voice", although it's "generally somewhat lower than that of facial expression". In a study by
Scherer, it was found that in Western countries sadness had 79% of accuracy for facial
recognition and 71% for vocal, while in Non-Western countries the results were of 74% and
58%, respectively.[21]