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Why does some music make us sad?

CrowdScience

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Empathy and the Sadness Paradox

Not everyone enjoys listening to sad music so we wanted to find out what those individual differences are and one personality trait that has been found in previous studies is empathy. So do you think that empathy could have something to do with the sadness paradox? Yes absolutely because there is also an aspect of empathy that is not exactly feeling the same emotion as what the other person is experiencing but it's rather the experience of sympathy or compassion which is actually a positive experience. We had over 300 participants, they listened to several music examples which varied in how sad they were and how moving they were.

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