A sigh of frustration – but you didn’t see it!
In a final experiment, Tejgen and colleagues presented participants with two problem-solving tasks, the first a difficult but solvable one, the second, an easy-seeming but in reality, impossible one. The students were instructed to work as long as they wanted to, and told that they could give up at any point. If they persisted, they were cut off after ten minutes. In the meantime, observers were looking at how often and when they sighed.
What the researchers found was that most everyone sighed, and quite frequently at that. Most often, the sighs came in breaks between unsuccessful attempts at a solution. And surprisingly, most people did not remember having sighed at all—and some continued to deny it even when told that they had been observed.
Sighs, it seems, are indeed natural in frustrating settings, coming almost subconsciously to those who are struggling through a problem that is resisting their attempts at a solution. But did I sigh? Of course not. I would only sigh in private—it would be rude in public! Others in the experiment, sure, but not me. You tell me I sighed? Funny. I don’t remember that at all. You must be mistaken. It was someone else. I’m sure it was someone else.
So is a sigh simply a sigh? The answer, it seems, is as complicated as that of most emotions. It depends. Obviously, much work remains to be done to determine the whats, wheres, and whys of sighing, but such research is time well spent. Not only does it teach us about how and why we feel, but it sheds light on how we see both ourselves and those around us and offers a rare window into some of the emotions that are contained just below the surface of awareness, making it out into the world in the guise of gestures and expressions like the sigh, but escaping our own notice all the same.