Musical Schadenfreude: Can Sad Music Lead to Positive Emotions? (2012)

Undergraduates: Keenan Jenkins, Keenan Jenkins

Faculty Advisor: Barbara Fredrickson
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

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This thesis explores the means through which sad music can lead to positive emotions. The broaden aspect of Fredrickson’s (1998; 2001) broaden-and-build theory serves as a basis for this project. Specifically, this thesis examines whether absorption into sad music can lead to cognitive broadening, assessed by the RAT (Mednick, 1962) and the IOS scale (Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992). 76 participants listened to happy music, sad music, or completed a neutral reading task. Some participants were manipulated to experience absorption. Hypothesis 1 predicted that absorption into sad music leads to more cognitive broadening than sad music without absorption. Hypothesis 2 predicted that psychological resiliency moderates the relationship between absorption into sad music and cognitive broadening. As an ancillary hypothesis, cognitive broadening was not expected to differ between those who listened to sad music with absorption and those who listened to happy music without absorption. The main hypotheses were rejected in this thesis. Limitations, implications, and future research prospects are discussed.