Why are we so drawn to sad movies? To get to the root of that question, let's consider the magnum opus of tearjerker movies: Titanic.
On paper, there's not much about Jack and Rose's story that should render this movie cathartic: more than 1,500 people die, and our leads-in-love famously wind up on opposite ends — in the up-down sense — of the ocean. So why exactly do people like me turn to Titanic with regularity in order to feel better? To answer that, some point to a study from Ohio State University that used another gold medalist among movies to cry to, Atonement, as a vehicle for understanding why these movies make us happier. What researchers found is that sad movies, like Titanic and Atonement, make us think about the relationships we hold near and dear in our own lives. As Silvia Knoblock-Westerwick, lead author of the study and a professor of Mediated Communication at the Technical University of Berlin, put it: "Tragic stories often focus on themes of eternal love, and this
