Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Want to Smile? Try Listening to Sad Music…

music-clipart4In a recent study discussed by MedicalExpress and published in Frontiers in Psychology, Ai Kawakami and his team of researchers help explain why people enjoy listening to sad music.

Their study entitled Sad Music Induces Pleasant Emotion surveyed 44 volunteers, some who are musicians while others had no expertise in the field. The volunteers were given three pieces of music to listen to and then were instructed to use keywords to record their perception of the music and emotional state while listening to them.

There were two pieces of sad music; Glinka’s “La Séparation” in F minor and Blumenfeld’s Etude “Sur Mer” in G minor, and one piece of happy music, Granados’s Allegro de Concierto in G major.

Research outside of this study conducted by Glenn Schellenberg has shown that sad music often has a slow tempo and is composed in a minor key. While happy music is usually faster, with more beats per minute and in a major key. In order to create a control for the study, the researchers also played the happy piece in a minor key and the sad piece in a major key.

“Music that is perceived as sad actually induces romantic emotion as well as sad emotion…”

Researchers concluded that sad music can evoke positive emotion because it often reminds the listener of romance. Romantic emotions are often positive because they evoke feelings of happiness and being in love.

The music is also often more sad than the listeners own life. It may appear more tragic or unhappy than how individuals felt while listening to it. This then helps to provoke a contradictory emotion (happiness) than what is displayed in the music.

Researchers also noted that sadness experienced in one’s life and music is very different. If sadness is occurring in your own life it is a direct threat to your emotional well being. If experienced through music, however, there is no threat and it is much easier to enjoy the negative emotions.

“Emotion experienced by music has no direct danger or harm unlike the emotion experienced in everyday life. Therefore, we can even enjoy unpleasant emotion such as sadness. If we suffer from unpleasant emotion evoked through daily life, sad music might be helpful to alleviate negative emotion,”

What do you think? Do you feel happier when listening to sad songs?

To learn more about this topic be sure to check out the abstract of the study, and related article by DailyMail that includes the music featured in the study.

You can also check out one of Humintell’s older blogs, Why We’re Happy About Being Sad: The Emotions Behind Pop Music

Influencing Difficult People

Influencing Difficult People How many of you have to influence difficult people?  Whether it is daily, weekly or every now and again, just the thought of that person has probably seen your nose immediately wrinkle with some level of disgust.

Difficult people are not a problem if we don’t have to interact with them on a personal level such as passing them on the street, sitting in the same train carriage or even sharing an elevator with them.  If we see them being difficult with others we can just dismiss them and move on with our lives.

But, and there is a but, when we have to interact with them, work with them, and more importantly when we have to influence them, difficult people can become major drain on your energy and your physical and psychological resources.

Difficult people tend to relish the interaction, they have boundless energy and always put up a good fight.  If only you could harness their energy for good rather than evil.

In the field of influence we know that it is what you do first that matters most.

If you continue to look upon them as difficult people that is exactly what they will remain.  For some direction here we can look to Irish philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke (1729–1797) who said,

 “He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill.”

So you can either look upon them as a great adversary, someone who is honing your influencing skills and making you better for the interaction or if this is a bridge too far I’ll bring you back to the point above, use their skills for good rather than evil.

For example, those of you who have ridden a horse before will know that it is easier to ride the horse in the direction it is going rather than try and tear its head off in getting it to change direction, especially a direction it doesn’t want to go in.

So embrace your problem child.  Give them a role to review the work of others, to provide quality assurance, just as the Catholic church used the Devil’s Advocate to argue against the canonization of a proposed saint.  Give the problem employee the role of taking a skeptical view, to look for holes in the evidence and argue for correctness, i.e. use their skills for good rather than evil.

Even if you are opposing people who you can’t give this role to, think of their hard questions, lack of willingness to budge from a predetermined position and general difficult nature as a positive.  They are making your case better and more robust by pointing out the potential weaknesses.  Even if the points they make are not weaknesses take solace in the fact that you can adequately deal with that objection and know that your case is becoming even more bulletproof.

By looking upon them as an ally rather than an adversary you will then be able to cooperate with them, praise them for their tough questions and identify the shared goals you have – all the basis for Liking.  In doing so you will change the nature of the relationship, not by heavy handed tactics or actions that lead to tantrums and tears – instead you create a place for a relationship to build when none existed before.

Change the way you think about influencing difficult people and at the very least they will make you smile!