From time to time, I like to reflect and look back on the stories I’ve consumed over the years. Whether they’re movies, TV shows, or even books, I’ve come to the same conclusion numerous times: I love sad stories. In the past, I’ve chalked it up to me just naturally finding depressing stories more interesting… which makes me sound a little crazy, but I also know for sure that I’m not the only one who feels this way. Therefore, I feel that this explanation is a little too incomplete.
So, then… Why? Why do so many of us return again and again to stories that hurt us? After all, humans are biologically hardwired to want to avoid pain. What is so different about emotional pain? Well, as it turns out, it’s not that emotional pain is processed differently. It’s merely interpreted differently.
COGNITIVE APPRAISAL: INTERPRETING THE EXPERIENCE
Now, yes, this is where I’m going to start being a bit of a nerd. Please bear with me here.
A cool little fun fact about our brains is that physical and emotional pain actually activate overlapping neural systems. If you’re wondering what determines how we respond to physical or emotional pain, that’s where cognitive appraisal comes in. Cognitive appraisal is essentially our mental interpretation of an event; it allows us to determine the personal significance of that event, and thus our emotional response to it.
How does cognitive appraisal tie into our engagement with sad stories? Well, when we engage with sad stories, our cognitive appraisal shifts in a crucial way. This kind of shift allows us to sit back and engage with the emotion rather than reject it or try to get away from it. Of course, the pain is still felt, but it’s no longer something we feel compelled to escape. When we’re able to sit with the sadness like this, we often tend to dissect that feeling by, for instance, analyzing the character’s choices or even projecting our own experiences onto the narrative (which is quite therapeutic, dare I say). In this way, cognitive appraisal transforms emotional pain into something that we can explore and find immense value in.
PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCE AND SAFETY
If cognitive appraisal determines how we interpret the emotional pain from witnessing a sad scene in a movie or TV show, then the psychological distance is what makes that reinterpretation possible in the first place.
When we’re engaging with sad stories, there is an unspoken awareness that what we are experiencing is not actually happening to us. The characters are fiction, their thoughts and feelings are fiction, and the events in which these characters are “living” through are… you guessed it. Fiction. Even in stories that are based on real life, there is still a layer of separation between the narrative and the viewer. Because of this distance, we feel a sense of safety that fundamentally changes how we process emotion.
If we compare this to real-world situations, we can easily see how our sadness in the moment is accompanied with uncertainty, risk, and an overwhelming loss of control. These factors naturally push the brain towards protective responses like withdrawal, avoidance, or attempts to reduce distress as quickly as possible. When we’re watching a movie, however, those pressures aren’t present; there are no perceived consequences for feeling deeply, no actions we feel required to take, and no persistent need to protect ourselves from harm. This distance between us and the fictional story on the screen allows us to feel intensely while still maintaining some sense of control.
This balance between immersion and safety is what I believe makes sad stories so compelling. We’re close enough to feel the emotions behind the narrative and of the characters, but distant enough to the point we can handle it without feeling a need to flee.
THE VALUE OF VICARIOUS EXPERIENCES
So… we’ve established that, yes, our brains are smart enough to realize that these fictional scenarios we perceive aren’t happening directly to us. And because of that, we’re able to sit with emotions that would otherwise feel overwhelming. But that still leaves our initial question, doesn’t it? If we’re not being threatened, if we’re not being forced to feel these things (there are a million other things I could do in place of devoting my time to a depressing series)… then why do we sometimes choose to?
The answer comes back to vicarious experiences. Stories grant us the access to lives we will never live, choices we will never make, and consequences we will (hopefully) never have to face. Through them, we are able to experience grief, loss, regret, or even longing in a way that is deeply personal yet temporary. If you ask me, there is something profoundly human about seeking those emotions out through fiction.
Honestly, I believe most of the benefit comes from the chance to be introspective. Through vicarious experiences, we come to understand different forms of pain that may not belong to us, and in doing so, we become more equipped to recognize and process those emotions in the real world. There have definitely been times when I’ve been in the middle of a show and found that the story was articulating a feeling I’ve never been able to name. It’s oddly validating, and a kind of validation that I think is often difficult to find elsewhere.
Perhaps that feeling of validation is part of the reason we love returning to sad stories. Not because we enjoy suffering, but because they allow us to feel deeply in a way that everyday life doesn’t always permit. Taking that moment to slow down and just sit with your emotions is incredibly meaningful.