Even in cultures where sadness is on the whole perceived to be negative, the absence of this feeling can be seen as problematic. A life spent feeling ceaselessly happy due to the drug soma was part of Aldous Huxley’s nightmare vision of the future in Brave New World. You could argue that if you never felt miserable then neither could you ever feel true happiness. However, we wouldn’t consider a life without illness to be a problem, despite a lack of contrast with good health. In fact when you feel ill the idea of feeling well again seems blissful, but after only a day or two of good health it’s easy to forget how good you feel. Just as it’s hard to appreciate every moment of well-being, it is hard to relish the absence of sadness.
In this chapter I’ll be exploring why a sad face expresses so much and what happens in the brain when we’re feeling sad, as well as the chemical secrets held within that strange symptom of sadness, crying. First it is necessary to understand the purpose of sadness and its close but more complex relation, depression.
the purpose of sadness
‘You just can’t imagine ever feeling happy again. You feel so helpless. There’s just a big void. You can’t even remember what it’s like to feel happy. At first you don’t know what’s going on. You don’t know why you’re crying all the time. You go onto a different level. You can laugh with people, but it’s a superficial laughter that starts in your head and only goes down to your neck.’
When I knew Chloe at school she had always been happy, pretty and popular, but when she was in her early thirties the end of a relationship was followed by a particularly stressful period at work. Suddenly she found herself bursting into tears without warning. ‘When it first happens it hits really hard. You forget about food. It’s too much effort. I remember being upset because my room was untidy but I just didn’t have the energy to tidy it. I phoned my mum and she said she’d come and help me. My bedroom was right next to the front door, but just getting up to let her in made me feel so tired that I had to go straight back to bed. It was very different from just feeling sad, but I think only people who’ve been through it can understand that. Other people think you could do something constructive, if only you tried, but it’s impossible. You feel such a failure and so guilty for not being able to do anything. You just feel useless and you take everything personally. You feel a complete burden, but you can’t even explain it to people properly.’
When depression can become this painful, it raises the question of why sadness evolved at all. Although we vary in our tendency to feel sad, we all feel it, which suggests that it is either an accidental by-product of evolution or that it serves a distinct purpose. It does have to be remembered, however, that evolution takes no account of our pain; natural selection concerns the provision of a life where we can survive long enough to reproduce successfully. The purpose is not to furnish us with a life that’s happy nor even healthy. Despite this, it is hard to see where sadness fits in. It paralyses people, preventing them from succeeding at work or finding partners, let alone reproducing. As we saw in the chapter on joy, a person who feels happy continues to pursue those activities which bring them joy, whether that entails remaining in a relationship or working hard at a job they like. Happiness or even the possibility of future happiness spurs us on. Sadness does the opposite. It can slow a person down to the extent where they stop working; they cease seeking other people’s company; or they even stay in bed. People with clinical depression struggle to find the will to start anything new at what appears to be the exact time that extra energy is needed to make major life-changes. The cognitive scientist, Keith Oatley, believes that we experience strong emotions when we face a crossing point; their purpose is to act as a bridge to the next step in life. Whether or not we decide to change direction is irrelevant. Sadness concentrates the attention, forcing us to stop and take stock. The problem with this theory is that although people do slow down and isolate themselves when they’re feeling sad, they don’t necessarily spend a lot of time deep in self-examination. In one study people were asked how they tended to behave if they were feeling sad. The most popular answers were listening to music or taking a nap. Scrutinising one’s life did not come high on the list.
Taking the idea even further, the American psychiatrist, Randolph Nesse, argues that the function of sadness is to control our energy levels. The idea is that if our chances of success on a project are low, on some level we realise this and start to feel miserable. Then we lose energy and motivation and abandon the project, which saves us from wasting time on something fruitless. It’s even been argued that the treatment of depression with drugs might artificially rid us of a useful emotion.
In some ways this theory does sound plausible, but extreme depression can lead to suicide, hardly an ideal way for evolution to continue the species. In the UK and Republic of Ireland somebody commits suicide every eighty-two minutes. Moreover, not everyone who becomes depressed is following a course which is doomed to end in failure. Sometimes it is the onset of the depression itself which ruins a person’s chances of success. Maybe it’s the case that a little sadness can be useful, but for a few people the system reacts too strongly.
A more extreme suggestion is proposed by Anthony Stevens and John Price in their book Evolutionary Psychiatry. This is the idea that in hunter-gatherer communities depression was a useful protective mechanism. A person who stopped contributing to the community could be cast out and at that time ostracisation could well result in death. Instead people who feared they were of no use to their community would become depressed. They would then be considered ill and cared for rather than thrown out. In many societies today this is not quite so successful because the community might not rally round, leaving a person isolated. The problem with this theory is that it fails to explain why a person’s view of themselves becomes so negative in the first place. Many people become depressed despite knowing they are valued by those around them.
An alternative approach to the purpose of sadness is to view it as an effective signal to others that you are in need of help. However, once again there are contradictions. At the very time they might benefit from the care of others, unhappy people often turn inwards, eschewing company. Moreover there isn’t a universal response to another person’s sadness. There’s no guarantee that telling someone that you feel sad will bring you help. It will depend on both the individual and the culture. Anthropologists have attempted to look at attitudes towards sadness around the world, but once the word ‘sadness’ is translated into another language it might not have precisely the same meaning. One clever study overcame the translation problem through the use of photographs of facial expressions. People were asked to label the expressions in their own language and these were then translated into English by a native speaker. Through this method it was found that there are five types of sadness in the Greek language and six in Japanese. Therefore elements of sadness might be universal, but it might not be a single, basic emotion in all cultures. In some societies sadness is viewed as an acceptable emotion only for women or children. This happens to an extent in Western societies, where unhappy women are more likely to experience symptoms of depression, while men are more likely to express their misery through violence. If the purpose of sadness is to attract help, then it’s a system lacking in efficiency because help is not always forthcoming. Many would prefer to spend an evening with somebody cheerful than listen to the woes of another.
So, we cannot be certain of the evolutionary purpose of sadness. It could involve elements of all these theories – an emotion which slows us down, gives us time to reflect and if necessary change plans, whilst signalling to others that we need them and thus strengthening those bonds. Certainly our faces are remarkably good at conveying our feelings when it comes to sadness.
the sad face
If sadness is to serve any communicative purpose, it needs to be obvious. When Darwin spent time studying the way the face expresses misery he noted that in many different cultures pulling down the corners of the mouth indicated sadness, hence the phrase ‘down in the mouth’. What intrigues me about the facial expression of sadness is that it’s usually more fleeting than the experience of sadness. You might feel sad for days,