What Causes Grief?

Grief is one of the earliest emotions that an individual has, and it is also a kind of emotion that humans have begun to recognize very early. It is generally believed that sadness is an emotional response caused by separation, loss, and failure.

Chinese name: sad

Foreign name: sadness
Applied discipline: psychology

Sadness

Sadness can be caused by external events such as separation, loss, and loss.However, due to the influence of different individuals' evaluation standards, personality traits, and other factors, whether the same event or situation can cause sadness or the intensity and duration of the sadness can vary depending on the individual. It's different. Moreover, the sadness of different situations has different reaction trends and external performance. These problems have increased the difficulty in understanding the mechanism of sadness. Different researchers often emphasize one aspect of the problem and therefore have different views on the occurrence of sadness. It is generally believed that many factors such as evoked events, cognitive processing, subjective experience, brain area activity, reaction trends, and external performance should be considered in general when examining the occurrence of sadness.

Sadness- induced event

Sadness is initially caused by the prototype event. In the event of constant perception, when the prototype meets the condition of loss, it will cause sadness. The lost goal or object changes according to the degree of importance or type.It may be a person, a place, an unfulfilled ambition, an object of value to the individual, or an abstract ideal and moral value; the subject of loss may be Others than themselves, groups rather than individuals. The former, such as the death of a spouse, and the latter, such as the death of a public figure; the lost time system can be past, present or future. People may cherish memories of the past, grieve over the passing of childhood, or grieve over the loss that has not yet occurred and imagined. Loss may be short-term, such as a short separation between parents and children; loss may also be permanent and irreparable, such as the death of a loved one.

Grief Cognitive Evaluation

Grief depends on the individual's assessment of loss or failure. The same experience of academic failure, some individuals will develop sadness, while others will not, this is related to the cognitive evaluation of failure. For normal people, the duration of sadness mode activation is extremely short, because after the sadness mode is activated, the suppression process also occurs. In the process of inducing sad state of mind, subjects may begin to recall happy events and produce positive self-propositions, replacing negative states with positive states. Under normal circumstances, people may use different strategies in different models. Such as recalling positive events at the level of association; using positive self-concepts at the level of propositions; generating different emotional self-patterns at the level of schemas. At the same time, an effective strategy can be run in all modes.

Sad subjective experience

Emotional experience is the state of feeling of the brain, and constitutes a relatively independent process in consciousness. Levenson (2003) believes that although it is sometimes difficult to say what this feeling is, we do feel it when certain emotions occur. These experiences and feelings provide motivation for behavior, and organize and disintegrate cognition and behavior. Sad experiences include depression, disappointment, discouragement, depression, loneliness, and isolation. The intensity and persistence of grief are also quite different. Sad experiences can be mild, lasting only a few seconds, or they can be intense, lasting minutes, hours, or even a lifetime.According to Izard (1991) 's theory of emotional differentiation, sadness is more important than other negative emotions such as anger and fear. , Its tension is lower. Sadness is extremely easy to experience in people's lives, and it often interacts with other emotions such as anger, fear and shame to form complex emotions. Regarding the generation of sad emotional experience, James (1884) believed that the pattern of autonomic changes during the occurrence of emotions is the reason for the subjective experience. According to Gross (2002) 's theory of emotional production process, sadness Experience is the result of an evaluation of emotional cues. Izard (1991) believes that the generation of sad experiences depends on sad facial muscle activity, that is, emotional events act on individuals, activating the innate preprogrammed emotions stored in the hypothalamus, and the outgoing information generates patterned facial muscles. Activity, the sensory feedback of facial muscle activity enters the marginal cortex area, making emotions enter the consciousness, thereby forming an emotional experience. 4) Brain area activity

The generation of grief depends on the activity of the brain. Existing research shows that the generation of grief involves a wide range of brain regions, especially the prefrontal cortex, the cingulate gyrus, the amygdala and the hippocampus.

Coping

Sad positive review

The positive re-evaluation is mainly a cognitive reorganization of the problem situation with a more positive perspective. Through positive re-evaluation, people turn their attention to the good aspects of what is happening or has happened, so the meaning of the situation is changed and people experience more positive emotions. Fridrickson (2003) studied the coping style and negative emotional relationship of the partner's bereaved at four time points: the first three and one month after the death of the partner, and one and three months after the death of the partner, It was found that during the caregiving of the partner and the death of the partner, positive re-evaluation was associated with an increase in positive emotions; after the death of a loved one, positive re-evaluation was associated with a decrease in sadness. Positive re-evaluation helps individuals in a state of sorrow to generate positive emotions, and positive emotions help to cope with sadness. First of all, the positive emotions experienced by individuals can improve the goal and planning of individual activities. Studies such as Stein (1997) have shown that during the death of a loved one, individuals who can experience positive emotions tend to establish long-term goals and plans, and the establishment of these long-term goals and plans indicates a better adaptation after one year situation. Second, positive emotions can trigger more social support. A study on emotional expression of widowed people by Kendall (1997) and others found that those who described smiling and laughing when describing their relationship with their deceased spouse experienced more positive emotions. Less frustration. It has also been found that people are more willing to provide comfort to those who show a smile. Third, positive emotions can also reduce the harmful effects of negative emotions. In one study, subjects were first watched a horror movie to induce negative emotions, then subjects were randomly assigned to four groups to watch a movie clip that triggered satisfaction, joy, sadness, and neutral emotions. The results showed that subjects who watched satisfactory and happy movies returned to baseline levels faster than those who watched sad and neutral movies. A study by Folkman & Moskowitz (2002) that examines the relationship between positive emotions and cardiovascular activity during the period during which sadness is elicited shows that during watching sadness-inducing movies, subjects with spontaneous smiles Subjects without spontaneous smile showed no significant difference in subjective experience and major cardiovascular measures. However, subjects with spontaneous smiles recovered faster than those without smiles. These studies show that positive emotions can partially eliminate the adverse psychological effects of sad emotions. 2) Attention shift

Attention transfer mainly includes playing other social roles and doing things that increase positive emotions. In a sad situation, individuals intentionally or unintentionally doing things that can increase positive emotions can supplement their psychological resources and improve their coping ability. In an interview study, Danner (2001) and others asked participants to describe what they did, what made them feel good, and what made sense to them or helped them overcome stress. 99.5% of the 1794 interviewees reported positive events. The researchers analyzed positive events that involved things other than care and the death of a loved one (a key source of stress), such as playing other social roles. In addition, they are often seemingly relatively small events, such as beautiful sunrises, friendly greetings from friends, a good grade in a quiz, and so on.

Grief problem solving

Problem solving is to take steps to deal directly with the problem. It includes any behavior and cognition that directly points to the stressor, such as making a list of things to do, drawing up a plan, studying the pros and cons of various problems, and so on. Studies such as Fridrickson (2003) have shown that during the sadness caused by the death of a loved one, individuals who can experience positive emotions tend to establish long-term goals and plans to solve problems, and the establishment of these long-term goals and plans indicates the individual Adaptation was better after one year. Problem solving is associated with low intensity sadness and high levels of positive emotions. For example, after the death of a loved one, there are usually many aftercare affairs. The successful completion of these affairs will help the healing of emotional trauma, increase self-efficacy and make people positive. During the death of a loved one, the execution of these affairs is particularly important to maintain positive emotions, otherwise there will often be a sense of sorrow, loss and helplessness during this period. In short, problem solving is associated with a decrease in sadness and an increase in positive emotions. Even if the problem that causes negative emotions cannot be completely solved, facing the problem with a positive attitude can enhance the sense of control and efficacy, thereby making individual emotions better. In this way, a virtuous circle is formed, that problem solving promotes an increase in positive emotions and a decrease in negative emotions, which in turn enhances problem solving.

Sad response adjustment

Refers to the fact that individuals have exerted influence on emotional reaction trends such as psychological experience, behavioral expression, and physiological response after sadness emotions have been stimulated, which are mainly manifested by behavioral expressions that reduce sadness emotional responses, and more optimistic and humorous emotional expression methods are used. Folkman & Moskowitz (2000) research found that humor can reduce tension and increase positive emotions, and at the same time help individuals to get more social support, so as to deal with sadness more effectively. Ong (2004) tracked 34 elderly widows who were short of widowed for 98 consecutive days. The study involved subjects' levels of humor, positive emotions, depression, anxiety and stress. Studies have found that there is a close relationship between reductions in positive emotions and stress. Individuals showing more positive emotions have less sadness and depression. Subjects with a stronger sense of humor had fewer symptoms of depression. The ability to adjust response is closely related to the individual's feelingstyle. Some individuals are more likely to generate positive emotions and benefit from positive emotions. Such individuals are called highly elastic individuals. In stressful situations or negative emotional experiences, highly resilient individuals can respond flexibly and quickly and effectively. Fridrickson (2003) and others have studied some of the parties involved in the 9/11 incident in the United States and found that highly resilient individuals can still report a strong positive experience after experiencing a strong sad event. Tugade (2004) used high-stress tasks to induce participants' negative emotions, and found that highly elastic individuals reported more positive emotions before and during tasks. ^[1]