ReviewFrontiers in human neuroscience2015
The pleasures of sad music: a systematic review.
Review in Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 79 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
79 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 290 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of dance-based interventions on body image and self-worth in overweight and obese individuals: a systematic review.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Pooled it
- Neural correlates of negative aesthetic evaluations in visual art: a neuroimaging meta-analysis.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Pooled it
- A systematic review of the neural correlates of positive emotions.Revista brasileira de psiquiatria (Sao Paulo, Brazil : 1999)Pooled it
- Loop and Enjoy: A Scoping Review of the Research on the Effects of Processing Fluency on Aesthetic Reactions to Auditory Stimuli.Psychological reports · 2026Article
- Aesthetic experience is supported by spontaneous autobiographical memory recollection.Memory & cognition · 2026Article
- A comparison of transient experiential wellbeing across health enhancing behaviours in the American Time Use Survey.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Empathy and musical reward sensitivity in middle childhood: a psychometric validation of the Barcelona music reward questionnaire in children aged 7-9.Frontiers in cognition · 2026Article
- Music as a tool for personal and social resilience: a three-level conceptual model.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- How Familiarity, Musical Affinity, and ADHD Shape Adolescents' Perception of Musical Emotions.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The MuRQoL-He-Hebrew Adaptation of the Music Related Quality of Life Questionnaire Among Adults Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing.Audiology research · 2025Article
- Emotions in the Brain Are Dynamic and Contextually Dependent: Using Music to Measure Affective Transitions.eNeuro · 2025Article
- A Causal Model for Surveys of Exploratory Listening and Music Appreciation.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Differences in structural brain morphometry between musicians and non-musicians.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- EEG microstates dynamics of happiness and sadness during music listening.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Article
- Neuroaesthetics: exploring the role of aesthetic experience in neurorehabilitation.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Empathy strengthens the effect of emotion on beauty.Research square · 2024Article
- Understanding the Effect of Listening to Music, Playing Music, and Singing on Brain Function: A Scoping Review of fNIRS Studies.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- Heart rate-related physiological changes induced by classical music-elicited emotions do not underlie alterations in healthy adults' ankle joint target-matching strategy.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Construction of a Chinese traditional instrumental music dataset: A validated set of naturalistic affective music excerpts.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
19 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sadness is generally seen as a negative emotion, a response to distressing and adverse situations. In an aesthetic context, however, sadness is often associated with some degree of pleasure, as suggested by the ubiquity and popularity, throughout history, of music, plays, films and paintings with a sad content. Here, we focus on the fact that music regarded as sad is often experienced as pleasurable. Compared to other art forms, music has an exceptional ability to evoke a wide-range of feelings and is especially beguiling when it deals with grief and sorrow. Why is it, then, that while human survival depends on preventing painful experiences, mental pain often turns out to be explicitly sought through music? In this article we consider why and how sad music can become pleasurable. We offer a framework to account for how listening to sad music can lead to positive feelings, contending that this effect hinges on correcting an ongoing homeostatic imbalance. Sadness evoked by music is found pleasurable: (1) when it is perceived as non-threatening; (2) when it is aesthetically pleasing; and (3) when it produces psychological benefits such as mood regulation, and empathic feelings, caused, for example, by recollection of and reflection on past events. We also review neuroimaging studies related to music and emotion and focus on those that deal with sadness. Further exploration of the neural mechanisms through which stimuli that usually produce sadness can induce a positive affective state could help the development of effective therapies for disorders such as depression, in which the ability to experience pleasure is attenuated.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.