Sadness

File:A child sad that his hot dog fell on the ground.jpg

A child crying

Sadness is an emotional state characterized by feelings of disadvantage, loss, and helplessness. When sad, people often become quiet, less energetic, and withdrawn.

Sad is the negation of happy. Its synonyms are sorrow, grief, misery, and melancholy. The philosopher Baruch Spinoza defined sadness as the transfer of a person from a large perfection to a smaller one.

Sadness can be viewed as a temporary lowering of mood, whereas depression is characterized by a persistent and intense lowered mood, as well as disruption to one's ability to function in day to day matters. When sad we often go through a process called crying where we shed tears.

Studies have shown that when someone says they are angry or filled with hate that they are actually deeply sad or disappointed. Hate and anger are often ways emotionally disturbed individuals express sadness or disappointment. Due to an inability or refusal to express their true feelings of sadness and disappointment.

Pupil empathy

Facial expressions of sadness with small pupils are judged significantly more intensely sad with decreasing pupil size. A person's own pupil size also mirrors this with them being smaller when viewing sad faces with small pupils. No parallel effect exists when people look at neutral, happy or angry expressions. The greater degree to which a person's pupil's mirror another predicts a person's greater score on empathy.

See also

• Depression (emotion)
• Ennui
• Homesickness
• Separation reactions

Key texts

Papers

• Tiedens LZ (January 2001). Anger and advancement versus sadness and subjugation: the effect of negative emotion expressions on social status conferral. J Pers Soc Psychol 80 (1): 86–94.
• Ambady & Gray, 2002
• Forgas JP (March 1998). On feeling good and getting your way: mood effects on negotiator cognition and bargaining strategies. J Pers Soc Psychol 74 (3): 565–77.
• Forgas JP (August 1998). On being happy and mistaken: mood effects on the fundamental attribution error. J Pers Soc Psychol 75 (2): 318–31.
• Forgas JP (1994). The role of emotion in social judgments: an introductory review and an Affect Infusion Model (AIM). Eur J Soc Psychol 24 (1): 1–24.
• Forgas JP, Bower GH (July 1987). Mood effects on person-perception judgments. J Pers Soc Psychol 53 (1): 53–60.
• Isen AM, Daubman KA, Nowicki GP (June 1987). Positive affect facilitates creative problem solving. J Pers Soc Psychol 52 (6): 1122–31.
• Keltner D, Ellsworth PC, Edwards K (May 1993). Beyond simple pessimism: effects of sadness and anger on social perception. J Pers Soc Psychol 64 (5): 740–52.

External links

• Raghunathan, MT Pham - Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1999
• Keltner et al., 1998

simple:Sad cs:Deprese (psychologie)