Why Do We Feel Bad About Being Sad?

The societal pursuit of happiness

Modern western societies expect people to be happy and not sad. From brand advertisements that emphasize the instant gratification associated with the purchase of their goods to motivational speakers and self-help books that promise effective strategies to boost people’s happiness, it is clear that there is a strong societal emphasis on pursuing positive feelings. The occasional experience of negative feelings is often dismissed as deviant or dysfunctional, considered bad for our mental health. Although feeling sad, stressed, angry, or anxious at times undeniably serves an adaptive purpose, the functionality of these negative emotional states is rarely mentioned in modern societal discourse.

Social norms greatly influence the way we behave, think, and feel. In the case of emotions, we have a general conception of how others around us evaluate the experience of certain kinds of emotions, and how socially appropriate it is to experience or express particular feelings. In a new study, published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, we examined how the pressure to live up to these social emotion standards may have implications for the way we view or present ourselves, our so-called self-concept.

Does the social pressure to be happy and not sad relate to self-images that are more positive or more negative?

Source: Alexas Fotos/Pixabay

Two possible scenarios

On the one hand, it could be that the societal norm to be happy and not sad may encourage people to present themselves in an (overly) positive way, aiming to conform with the societal norm. As such, the perception of others' expectations that we not feel negative could instigate a socially desirable response in which people forsake each negative statement about themselves in order to present a self-image that corresponds to the prevailing cultural norm. (Think about the positive self-representations on social media!)

On the other hand, it is also possible that the societal norm to be happy and not sad may be unattainable, inevitably revealing a discrepancy between our actual emotions and the desired cultural norm. Because we all feel sad or anxious sometimes, we may perceive an inability to meet the socially acceptable standard of avoiding these negative feelings, which prompts negative self-evaluations and the ironic amplification of these unwanted emotional states. Following this rationale, perceived social expectancies not to feel negative are associated with a self-concept that is more negative, and less positive, because we experience an incongruity between how we actually feel and how we think we should feel according to others.

The current study

In a large-scale online study, we evaluated people’s perceived social expectancies not to experience negative emotions. This was done with a 13-item survey that assessed people’s beliefs about how others around them, but also society in general, perceive people who experience various negative emotional states such as depression or anxiety (e.g., I think that society generally disapproves of people who feel depressed or anxious.). We also assessed their tendency to present themselves in a socially desirable way (e.g., No matter who I’m talking to, I’m always a good listener.), and their actual experience of negative emotions (e.g., I often feel down-hearted and blue.)

Finally, we gave them a self-description task in which they had to complete open-ended statements to the question “Who am I?" They could freely write the answers as they occurred to them. Using specialized text analysis software, we determined the emotional content of people’s self-evaluations. Specifically, we analyzed the number of positive and negative words in their self-descriptions.

People who reported a lot of social pressure to avoid negative feelings used considerably less positive and more negative emotion words in their self-evaluations. Interestingly, this relation was independent of people’s tendency to present themselves in a socially desirable way. While the tendency to present oneself in a socially desirable way related to more positive and less negative emotion words in people’s self-descriptions, the opposite was true for their perceived social pressure not to feel negative.

In contrast, actually experiencing negative feelings was related to both more perceived social pressure not to feel negative and more negative (and less positive) self-evaluations. This suggests that the relationship between perceived social pressure not to feel negative and negative self-concept was driven by the actual experience of negative emotions.

Conclusion

In sum, the current findings reveal that observing a discrepancy between how we actually feel and how we think we should feel according to the predominant normative standard is related to more negative, and less positive, self-reflections. Because we all occasionally experience negative emotions that deviate from the cultural norm, this perceived failure may lead us to respond to our own emotions with negative self-evaluations (feeling bad about being sad).

Depression Essential Reads

The Latest on the Medications and Therapies That Treat Depression

Winter Blues and Summer Sighs: A Cultural Take on SAD

As such, it is possible that the societal message to pursue positive emotions at the cost of negative ones paradoxically aggravates the experience of negative affect, prompting negative self-evaluations. In this way, this study further adds to the literature that describes the potential detrimental effects of a one-sided valuation of positive versus negative emotions. A cultural message that encourages a more nuanced embrace of our emotional repertoire could potentially be more advantageous for our mental health and the way we view ourselves.

(Parts of this blog appear in Dejonckheere & Bastian [2020], Perceiving social pressure not to feel negative is linked to a more negative self-concept.)​