Sadness “leaks” into social behavior and physiology

When someone experiences sadness before a social interaction, the effects may linger—even if they try to hide it. A new study published in Emotion suggests that these subtle emotional residues can influence both behavior and physiological responses in social interactions. Interestingly, the study also found that men and women may express sadness differently when meeting new people. Men who had just recalled a sad event appeared more engaged during the interaction, while women tended to withdraw.

The researchers wanted to understand whether sadness experienced privately could still affect how someone behaves and connects with another person during a subsequent interaction. They also sought to explore whether gender influences how sadness is expressed and perceived.

Most past studies in this area have focused on high-energy emotions like stress or anger and have largely involved women. This study expanded the scope to include sadness—a quieter, lower-arousal emotion that may be harder to detect—and examined how both men and women respond to it during interactions with strangers.

“We’ve long known that high-arousal emotions, like anxiety, tend to spill over into our interactions. However, anxiety tends to be pretty visible—you might notice an anxious person tense up or stutter,” said study author Kareena del Rosario, a PhD candidate at New York University and member of the West Interpersonal Perception Lab.

“This made us wonder whether more subtle, low-arousal emotions like sadness also leak out into our social interactions and affect how we behave, even if we’re not consciously aware of it. In other words, when we try to bury our emotions to get through a social situation, are we really keeping them hidden or do they end up seeping out?”

The researchers recruited 230 adults who were randomly paired into same-gender dyads with someone they had never met. Before meeting each other, participants were placed into one of two conditions.

In the “sad dyad” condition, one member of the pair recalled a personal experience of deep sadness, while their partner recalled a neutral, routine experience. In the “control dyad” condition, both members recalled neutral experiences. Participants then engaged in a series of cooperative activities together, including conversation and a team-based word game.

Throughout the interaction, the researchers measured several indicators of emotional expression and social engagement. This included how much participants smiled or gestured, how sad they appeared to trained observers, and how their physiological responses changed over time.

One key measure was “physiologic linkage,” or how closely one person’s body responses predicted changes in their partner’s physiology. This was assessed using sensors that tracked heart function, specifically looking at a measure called preejection period, which is sensitive to emotional engagement and effort.

The researchers found that sadness did not disappear during the interaction—it showed up in subtle but measurable ways. “One of the main takeaways is that even a brief moment of sadness (e.g., reflecting on a personal experience for a few minutes) can have a lingering effect on behavior, and in turn, affect how others respond to you,” del Rosario told PsyPost. “However, people don’t always respond in the ways you might expect.”

These effects, however, were shaped by gender. Men who had recalled a sad event smiled and gestured more during the interaction than men in the control group.

Men’s behavior appeared to signal increased engagement, and their partners showed stronger physiological linkage to them. This suggests that even though the men may have tried to conceal their sadness, their behavior drew their partner in and shaped how connected the pair became.

In contrast, women who had recalled a sad event smiled less than their partners, signaling disengagement. These women also did not elicit strong physiologic linkage in their partners. Female pairs in which one member had recalled a sad event appeared less attuned to each other than those in the control group. In short, sadness appeared to lead to greater social withdrawal for women and greater visible engagement for men.

The researchers interpret this difference in light of social norms. Sadness is often viewed as more socially acceptable for women than for men. Men may feel pressure to avoid appearing vulnerable, especially when interacting with other men.

The increased smiling and gesturing observed in sad men may reflect an attempt to counteract their sadness and appear more engaged or upbeat—perhaps as a form of emotional regulation. This kind of compensatory behavior is consistent with previous findings that people sometimes try to mask uncomfortable emotions by overcorrecting in social situations.

Women, on the other hand, may feel less pressure to hide their sadness. Their reduced smiling and lack of strong physiologic connection with their partners may reflect a more authentic expression of the emotion. This withdrawal is consistent with how sadness is typically characterized: as a quiet emotion that leads people to pull back from others. Yet in a first-time social interaction, this can affect how connected two people become.

“We were really struck by the gender differences in our study,” del Rosario said. “Women tended to show more typical signs of sadness by being less expressive and engaged, whereas men seemed to amplify their engagement. We suspect that because men and women are socialized to express sadness differently, men’s heightened engagement may have been an effort to counteract their earlier sad feelings by overcompensating in their behavior.”

Interestingly, the participants themselves did not report feeling especially sad during the interaction. Self-reported emotions were low across the board after the activities, suggesting that the effects of the sadness recall were operating below conscious awareness. The influence of sadness seemed to show up more clearly in behavior and physiology than in how people described their own feelings.

The researchers also explored whether physiological coordination between partners was linked to their behaviors. They found some evidence that smiling was associated with stronger physiologic linkage, although this connection was modest. They also conducted a secondary analysis of another physiological signal, called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, which is linked to social bonding and responsiveness. Here too, differences emerged. Partners of sad participants showed more attunement, while the sad participants themselves showed less.

These results suggest that even when someone doesn’t talk about feeling sad, that emotion can affect how they interact with others—and how others respond to them. The effects are subtle, but they may play an important role in shaping first impressions, group dynamics, and even long-term relationships.

The study, like all research, has some caveats to consider. The study focused only on interactions between same-gender, cisgender individuals, meaning the findings may not generalize to interactions across gender lines or among people with more diverse gender identities. Also, the participants were strangers meeting for the first time, which may have amplified the effects of social norms.

Future research could examine how sadness plays out in interactions between friends, romantic partners, or people of different genders. It would also be useful to investigate how people behave when they are explicitly aware that their partner is feeling sad, rather than relying on subtle cues.

“Going forward, I’m interested in expanding this work to explore how various negative states, such as those directed toward others (e.g., perceiving an interaction partner as immoral), can seep into and shape our social interactions,” del Rosario explained.

“Additionally, while this study focused on how sadness affects how people engage with strangers when they have to work together, we’re also interested in its impact on other social contexts, such as in early dating relationships. Expanding the scope of this work will help us better understand how our inner experiences shape social connection.”

The study, “Working Through Emotions: Sadness Predicts Social Engagement and Physiologic Linkage for Men and Disengagement for Women in Dyadic Interactions,” was authored by Kareena S. del Rosario, Tessa V. West, Erika H. Siegel, and Wendy Berry Mendes.