Each feeling has its own length

Sadness stays, embarrassment passes

Each feeling also stays for a different length of time. One study asked high school students how long their recent feelings had lasted. Sadness lasted about 120 hours on average, which is around five days. Joy lasted about 35 hours, and embarrassment about 30 minutes. The blue line is sadness, yellow is joy, and pink is embarrassment.

Why?The researchers found that the biggest reason a feeling lasts is rumination, which means thinking about the same thing again and again. Each time you replay it, the feeling comes back. Feelings about things that mattered more to people also lasted longer. So even the same sadness can be long or short, depending on how much you replay it.

Go furtherThis 2015 study came from a university in Belgium. 233 students recalled 27 kinds of feelings they had recently had. The times are averages from memory, not measured with a clock. The three lines on screen are an illustrative model, tuned to settle at those average times.