When everything is going wrong, there's nothing like listening to a few bars of your favorite sad song. But why do we find pleasure in sad music? This puzzled two researchers at the Freie Universität Berlin in Germany who set out to explore our strong feeling for sad songs in a world where entire industries exist to help us remove sadness from our lives.
Their study — based on a survey of more than 770 people around the world and published this month in the journal, PLOS ONE — discovered sad music can create positive emotions, like peacefulness and kindness, and that choosing the tearful ballad on your music player offers three benefits.
The biggest turned out to be that sad songs allow you to feel sadness without any of its “real-life contexts.” In other words, you can safely explore what it's like to be a little blue without experiencing the great pain of losing a loved one, for example.
“Emotion control” was another important benefit. Many of those surveyed said that when they were in a bad mood (情绪), experiencing sadness through music made them feel better afterwards and provided an emotional improvement. That may be because the songs help them to express and let go of their emotions, researchers noted. “Sad music promotes and creates a space for reflection and reexamination of personal experiences, thoughts and feelings,” one of the researchers added
The benefit of “empathy” (同理心) made the listener feel good by allowing him to share the sadness of another human being through the song. When we're having social problems, like when we're feeling lonely, homesick or missing someone, the sad songs can offer comfort by showing someone else shares our state of mind, the study found.
So it turns out that Elton John was right: Sad songs do say so much.
8. What does the underlined word “This” in Paragraph 1 refer to?
A.When things go wrong. | B.What to explore in sad songs. |
C.Why sad music brings us joy. | D.How to remove sadness from life. |
9. Which of the following best describes the findings of the study?
A.Benefits of sad music. |
B.Strong feelings in sad music. |
C.Real-life contexts of sad music. |
D.Empathetic comforts from sad music. |
10. How does sad music achieve "Emotion control"?
A.By freeing us from bad moods. | B.By bringing great pain to us. |
C.By helping us reflect on exams. | D.By providing a space for us. |
11. Why is Elton John mentioned at the end of the passage?
A.To prove Elton John was right. | B.To show Elton John wrote songs. |
C.To make the readers think deeply. | D.To stress the point of the passage. |