The pleasure of unadulterated sadness: Experiencing sorrow in fiction, nonfiction, and "in person."

We often experience intense emotions when we enter fictional worlds in film and literature and often shed real tears. The goal of this study was to determine whether emotional reactions (sadness and anxiety) to fiction are distinguishable from emotional reactions to fact. Fifty-nine young adults rated their sadness and anxiety levels in response to 4 film clips, 2 presented as fiction, 2 as nonfiction, and in response to the recall of an actual sad event personally experienced. Participants experienced equivalent levels of sadness and anxiety in response to films presented as fictional or factual. They also experienced equivalent levels of sadness in response to films and in response to a sad personal event. Anxiety levels, however, were significantly higher in response to personally experienced events. The fact that sadness elicited by films is unadulterated by the anxiety that accompanies the sadness of personal experience may explain, in part, the pleasure we derive from watching sad films. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)