Sad Songs Lift Moods- But Only If They're Beautiful

Listening to sad music when you're feeling depressed sounds like a pretty bad idea, but new research reveals that "beautiful but sad" music can actually lift your mood when you're feeling down.

In fact, previous research reveals that people really do choose to listen to sad music when they're feeling sad.

Scientists in the latest study wanted to understand why people tend to choose to listen to sad music when they're feeling blue.

The study looked at the effects of what "Self-Identified Sad Music" on people's moods. The research recorded people's reasons for choosing a particular piece of music when they felt sad, and the impact the music had on them.

The research involved 220 people who were asked to recall a negative emotional event they had experienced, and the music they listened to afterwards which they felt expressed sadness.

 The findings revealed that among the factors influencing music choice were its memory triggers for a particular event or time. Researchers found that people chose music based on the song's perceived aesthetic value. Factors that go into music choice involved songs that participants consider beautiful or those that convey a particular message.

"We found in our research that people's music choice is linked to the individual's own expectations for listening to music and its effects on them," study author Dr. Annemieke van den Tol, Lecturer in Social Psychology at Kent's School of Psychology, said in a news release.

"The results showed that if an individual has intended to achieve mood enhancement through listening to 'sad' music, this was in fact often achieved by first thinking about their situation or being distracted, rather than directly through listening to the music chosen," she added. "Indeed, where respondents indicated they had chosen music with the intention of triggering memories, this had a negative impact on creating a better mood."

The findings are published in the journal Psychology of Music.