In contrast, a positive mood (like feeling happy) typically serves as a signal indicating familiar and safe situations and results in a less detailed and attentive processing style. In other words, bad moods help us to be more attentive and focused in difficult situations. These often work as automatic, unconscious alarm signals, promoting a more attentive and detailed thinking style. Recent scientific experiments document the benefits of mild bad moods. And sadness has long been a trigger for artistic creativity. Sadness can also enhance empathy, compassion, connectedness and moral and aesthetic sensibility. Some negative moods, such as melancholia and nostalgia (a longing for the past), may even be pleasant and seem to provide useful information to guide future plans and motivation. When we’re sad, other people show concern and want to help. When we appear sad or in a bad mood, people often are concerned and are inclined to help.
These moods also act as a social signal that communicates disengagement and withdrawal from competition and provides a protective cover. However, mild, temporary bad moods may serve an important and useful adaptive purpose, by helping us to cope with everyday challenges and difficult situations. Intense and enduring sadness, such as depression, is obviously a serious and debilitating disorder. Negative emotions such as fear, anger, shame or disgust are helpful because they help us recognise, avoid and overcome threatening or dangerous situations.īut what is the point of sadness, perhaps the most common negative emotion, and one most practising psychologists deal with? In fact, the range of human emotions includes many more negative than positive feelings. Psychologists who study how our feelings and behaviours have evolved over time maintain all our affective states (such as moods and emotions) have a useful role: they alert us to states of the world we need to respond to. Other philosophers like the Stoics also highlighted the importance of learning to anticipate and accept misfortunes such as loss, sorrow or injustice. Even hedonist philosophers like Epicurus recognised living well involves exercising wise judgement, restraint and self-control and accepting inevitable adversity.
#SAD MOODS FULL#
And the works of many great artists such as Beethoven and Chopin in music, or Chekhov and Ibsen in literature explore the landscape of sadness, a theme long recognised as instructive and valuable.Īncient philosophers also believed accepting bad moods is essential to living a full life. Shakespeare’s tragedies are classics because they echo this theme. Greek tragedies exposed and trained audiences to accept and deal with the inevitable misfortune of human life. In fact, many of the greatest achievements of the human spirit deal with evoking, rehearsing and even cultivating negative feelings. In earlier historical times, short spells of feeling sad or moody (known as mild dysphoria) have always been accepted as a normal part of everyday life.
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