Sadness Lasts 240X Longer Than Other Emotions

A new psychology paper says people feel sad up to 240 times longer than they do ashamed, surprised, irritated or even bored. The reason may be because sadness often goes hand in hand with events of greater impact such as death or accidents and so we need more time to mull over and cope with what happened to fully comprehend it, say Philippe Verduyn and Saskia Lavrijsen of the University of Leuven in Belgium, who asked 233 high school students to recollect recent emotional episodes and report their duration. The participants also had to answer questions about the strategies they use to appraise and deal with these emotions. read more

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