According to the situated-cognition model, humans instinctively adapt their self-representation to their sociocultural context. This means that specific cultural environments reinforce particular social, emotional, and cognitive patterns of behavior (Oyserman, 2011). This is consistent with a psychological constructionist approach to emotion, which... See more

In line with this, some gait patterns have been associated with sadness (e.g., reduced walking speed, arm swing, and vertical head movements), supporting the notion that sadness is embodied in the way people walk (Michalak et al., 2009a, 2009b).

In contrast, slumped individuals show increased negative mood and use more words associated with sadness (Nair et al., 2015).

Chronic sadness is often (mis)diagnosed as a depressive disorder (Horwitz and Wakefield, 2007), and parallel bodies of literature linked psychological distress and depressive disorder to higher risk of chronic physical conditions (Bhattacharya et al., 2014) and premature mortality (Russ et al., 2012), with effects comparable to or larger than the... See more

Crying-related sadness is associated with increased heart rate and increased skin conductance (Gross et al., 1994), while noncrying sadness is associated with a reduction in heart rate, reduced skin conductance, and increased respiration (Gross et al., 1994; Rottenberg et al., 2003).

The characteristic facial expression of sadness contribute to what Charles Darwin described as the 'grief muscles', including the “omega melancholicum” and Veraguth’s folds (Greden et al., 1985).

Paradoxically, the experience of sadness may also lead to pleasant affective states. For instance, listening to sad music is often described as an enjoyable and a ‘moving’ experience (Sachs et al., 2015), especially when perceived as non-threatening and aesthetically pleasing.

Sadness may also sometimes be described as a psychological pain accompanied by additional feelings of loneliness, distress, depression, anxiety, grief and anguish (we discuss the linguistic complexity of sadness further in section 1.5).

In humans, sadness is characterised by specific behaviours (social withdrawal, lower reward seeking, slow gait), a typical facial expression (drooping eyelids, downcast eyes, lowered lip corners, slanting inner eyebrows), physiological changes (heart rate, skin conductance) as well as cognitive/subjective processes.