the singular form of hypothesis

Plural of Hypothesis: Rules and Examples

By: Author ESLBUZZ

Posted on Last updated: November 13, 2023

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The plural of hypothesis is a topic of much debate among scientists and researchers. While some argue that “hypotheses” is the correct plural form, others insist that “hypothese” is the proper way to refer to multiple hypotheses. So, which one is correct? In this article, we will explore the history and etymology of the word “hypothesis” and examine the different arguments for each plural form. By the end of this article, you will have a better understanding of the plural of “hypothesis” and be equipped to use it accurately in your scientific writing.

Plural of Hypothesis

Definition and Plural of Hypothesis

If you are a scientist or a researcher, you are probably familiar with the term “hypothesis.” A hypothesis is an idea or explanation for something that is based on known facts but has not yet been proved. It is often used as a starting point for scientific research.

There are several key components of a hypothesis:

Testability: A hypothesis must be testable through experimentation or observation. This means that it must be possible to collect data that can either support or refute the hypothesis.
Falsifiability: A hypothesis must be falsifiable, meaning that it can be proven false if it is not supported by the data. This is important because it allows scientists to eliminate incorrect explanations and focus on more accurate ones.
Specificity: A hypothesis must be specific in its predictions. It should clearly state what is being tested and what the expected outcome is.
Relevance: A hypothesis must be relevant to the research question or problem being addressed. It should be based on existing knowledge and observations related to the phenomenon being studied.

The plural of “hypothesis” is “hypotheses.” Scientists base scientific hypotheses on previous observations that cannot be explained with the available scientific theories. Experimenters may test and reject several hypotheses before solving a problem. The noun “hypothesis” has a Greek root, which is the derivation of the plural “hypotheses.”

It is important to note that a hypothesis is not a proven fact. It is simply an idea that can be tested and either confirmed or rejected through experiments or further research. A hypothesis is often used to explain a phenomenon or to predict the outcome of an experiment.

In scientific research, hypotheses are crucial for advancing knowledge and understanding of the world around us. They help researchers to identify the gaps in current knowledge and to develop new theories and explanations. Hypotheses are also used to guide experiments and to determine the best methods for collecting and analyzing data.

When to Use Hypothesis and Plural of Hypothesis

When conducting scientific research, it is important to understand when to use the singular form “hypothesis” and when to use the plural form “hypotheses.” A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon that can be tested through experimentation or observation. Scientists use hypotheses to guide their research and to make predictions about the outcomes of experiments.

When discussing a single proposed explanation, you would use the singular form “hypothesis.” For example, “My hypothesis is that increased exposure to sunlight will lead to increased plant growth.”

On the other hand, when discussing multiple proposed explanations, you would use the plural form “hypotheses.” For example, “The researchers tested several hypotheses before arriving at a conclusion.”

It is important to note that the plural form “hypotheses” is not used to refer to multiple instances of the same hypothesis. In this case, you would still use the singular form “hypothesis.” For example, “The experiment was conducted multiple times to test the same hypothesis.”

Examples of Hypothesis and Plural of Hypothesis in Sentences

When it comes to forming the plural of hypothesis, it’s important to remember that “hypotheses” is the only way to make the noun “hypothesis” plural. Here are a few examples of how to use “hypothesis” and “hypotheses” in sentences:

Using “hypothesis”:

You have developed a hypothesis about the cause of the problem.
My hypothesis is that the new treatment will improve patient outcomes.
The scientist presented a compelling hypothesis about the origin of the universe.
Before conducting any experiments, it’s important to develop a hypothesis to guide your research.

Using “hypotheses”:

The team’s hypotheses were all based on sound scientific principles, but only one was ultimately proven correct.
The researchers had to revise their hypotheses several times as they collected more data.
Without testing multiple hypotheses, it’s difficult to determine which one is the most accurate explanation for a given phenomenon.
The team’s hypotheses were all based on different assumptions, which made it difficult to determine which one was correct.

As you can see, the plural form of “hypothesis” is used when referring to multiple hypotheses. It’s important to use the correct plural form to ensure clear communication.

In addition to using “hypotheses” as the plural form, it’s also important to use the correct verb agreement. For example:

Correct: The hypotheses were tested.

Incorrect: The hypotheses was tested.

Using the correct verb agreement is just as important as using the correct plural form.

Plural Noun Rules For Regular Nouns

When it comes to making nouns plural, there are a few rules that you should keep in mind. In this section, we’ll cover the rules for both regular and irregular nouns.

Most regular nouns form their plurals by adding -s to the end of the singular form. For example, “car” becomes “cars”, “book” becomes “books”, and “desk” becomes “desks”.
If the singular noun ends in -s, -x, -z, -ch, or -sh, add -es to the end to form the plural. For example, “box” becomes “boxes”, “buzz” becomes “buzzes”, “wish” becomes “wishes”, and “church” becomes “churches”.
If the singular noun ends in a consonant followed by -y, change the -y to -ies to form the plural. For example, “city” becomes “cities”, “baby” becomes “babies”, and “party” becomes “parties”.
If the singular noun ends in a vowel followed by -y, add -s to form the plural. For example, “key” becomes “keys”, “boy” becomes “boys”, and “day” becomes “days”.
If the singular noun ends in -f or -fe, change the -f or -fe to -ves to form the plural. For example, “knife” becomes “knives”, “life” becomes “lives”, and “leaf” becomes “leaves”.
If the singular noun ends in a consonant followed by -o, add -es to form the plural. For example, “potato” becomes “potatoes”, “hero” becomes “heroes”, and “tomato” becomes “tomatoes”.
If the singular noun ends in a vowel followed by -o, add -s to form the plural. For example, “studio” becomes “studios”, “zoo” becomes “zoos”, and “radio” becomes “radios”.

Remember, these are just the basic plural noun rules for regular nouns. There are always exceptions and irregular nouns that follow different rules for forming plurals.

Plural Noun Rules For Irregular Nouns

List of common irregular plural nouns.

Here is a list of some of the most common irregular plural nouns in English:

Remember, when it comes to making nouns plural, it’s important to follow the rules for each individual noun. By keeping these rules in mind, you’ll be able to make any noun plural with ease.

Nouns That End in Us

Nouns that end in “us” in their singular form usually have “i” added to the end to form the plural. For example:

Plural: cacti
Plural: fungi
Plural: nuclei

Nouns That End in Is

Nouns that end in “is” in their singular form usually have “es” added to the end to form the plural. For example:

Plural: bases
Plural: analyses
Plural: hypotheses

Nouns That End in On and Um

Nouns that end in “on” or “um” in their singular form usually have “a” added to the end to form the plural. For example:

Plural: criteria
Plural: phenomena
Plural: curricula

It’s important to note that there are many exceptions to these rules, and some nouns have irregular plural forms that don’t follow any specific pattern. However, by knowing these basic rules, you can form the plural of many nouns correctly.

Plurals That Are the Same as Singulars

Some words in English have the same form for both singular and plural. These are known as “singularia tantum” or “pluralia tantum” words. “Hypothesis” is not one of them, but it is important to be aware of these types of words.

Here are some examples of singularia tantum words:

These words do not have a separate plural form, and they are always used in their singular form, even when referring to multiple items.

It’s important to remember that these words do not follow the usual rules of English grammar, and they can be confusing for non-native speakers.

In contrast, “hypothesis” follows the usual rules of English grammar and has a separate plural form, “hypotheses.” It’s important to use the correct plural form when referring to multiple hypotheses in academic or scientific writing.

Words That Look Like Plural Nouns but Are Singular Nouns

In the English language, there are several words that look like they are plural nouns, but they are actually singular nouns. These words can be quite confusing, especially when it comes to using them in sentences. Here are some examples of such words:

Mathematics
Linguistics

It’s important to keep in mind that using these words correctly can help you sound more knowledgeable and confident in your writing. So, take some time to review the proper usage of these words and make sure you are using them correctly in your writing.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the plural form of hypothesis?

The plural form of hypothesis is ‘hypotheses’.

How do you use ‘hypotheses’ in a sentence?

You can use ‘hypotheses’ in a sentence by replacing the singular ‘hypothesis’ with the plural form. For example, “The scientist tested multiple hypotheses to explain the results.”

What is the difference between hypothesis and hypotheses?

‘Hypothesis’ is the singular form of the word, while ‘hypotheses’ is the plural form.

Can you give some examples of hypotheses?

Sure! Here are some examples of hypotheses:

If I study for three hours a day, my grades will improve.
Eating a healthy diet can reduce the risk of heart disease.
People who exercise regularly are more likely to live longer.

What are the grammar rules for forming plurals?

The rules for forming plurals vary depending on the word. For most nouns, you simply add an ‘s’ to the end of the word. For nouns that end in ‘s’, ‘x’, ‘z’, ‘ch’, or ‘sh’, you add ‘es’ to the end. There are some exceptions to these rules, so it’s always a good idea to double-check if you’re unsure.

The plural form of hypothesis is 'hypotheses'.

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You can use 'hypotheses' in a sentence by replacing the singular 'hypothesis' with the plural form. For example, \"The scientist tested multiple hypotheses to explain the results.\"

"}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What is the difference between hypothesis and hypotheses?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"

'Hypothesis' is the singular form of the word, while 'hypotheses' is the plural form.

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"}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What are the grammar rules for forming plurals?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"

The rules for forming plurals vary depending on the word. For most nouns, you simply add an 's' to the end of the word. For nouns that end in 's', 'x', 'z', 'ch', or 'sh', you add 'es' to the end. There are some exceptions to these rules, so it's always a good idea to double-check if you're unsure.

"}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Why is it important to use the correct plural form?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"

Using the correct plural form is important because it helps to ensure that your writing is clear and easy to understand. It also shows that you have a good understanding of grammar, which can be important in academic or professional settings.

I hope this section has helped answer some of your questions about the plural form of hypothesis!

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Plural of Hypothesis

The Quick Answer

The Plural of Hypothesis

Are You Good at Plurals?

The standard rules for forming the plurals, why is there confusion over the plural of hypothesis.

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Definition of hypothesis

Did you know.

The Difference Between Hypothesis and Theory

A hypothesis is an assumption, an idea that is proposed for the sake of argument so that it can be tested to see if it might be true.

In the scientific method, the hypothesis is constructed before any applicable research has been done, apart from a basic background review. You ask a question, read up on what has been studied before, and then form a hypothesis.

A hypothesis is usually tentative; it's an assumption or suggestion made strictly for the objective of being tested.

A theory , in contrast, is a principle that has been formed as an attempt to explain things that have already been substantiated by data. It is used in the names of a number of principles accepted in the scientific community, such as the Big Bang Theory . Because of the rigors of experimentation and control, it is understood to be more likely to be true than a hypothesis is.

In non-scientific use, however, hypothesis and theory are often used interchangeably to mean simply an idea, speculation, or hunch, with theory being the more common choice.

Since this casual use does away with the distinctions upheld by the scientific community, hypothesis and theory are prone to being wrongly interpreted even when they are encountered in scientific contexts—or at least, contexts that allude to scientific study without making the critical distinction that scientists employ when weighing hypotheses and theories.

The most common occurrence is when theory is interpreted—and sometimes even gleefully seized upon—to mean something having less truth value than other scientific principles. (The word law applies to principles so firmly established that they are almost never questioned, such as the law of gravity.)

This mistake is one of projection: since we use theory in general to mean something lightly speculated, then it's implied that scientists must be talking about the same level of uncertainty when they use theory to refer to their well-tested and reasoned principles.

The distinction has come to the forefront particularly on occasions when the content of science curricula in schools has been challenged—notably, when a school board in Georgia put stickers on textbooks stating that evolution was "a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things." As Kenneth R. Miller, a cell biologist at Brown University, has said , a theory "doesn’t mean a hunch or a guess. A theory is a system of explanations that ties together a whole bunch of facts. It not only explains those facts, but predicts what you ought to find from other observations and experiments.”

While theories are never completely infallible, they form the basis of scientific reasoning because, as Miller said "to the best of our ability, we’ve tested them, and they’ve held up."

proposition
supposition

hypothesis , theory , law mean a formula derived by inference from scientific data that explains a principle operating in nature.

hypothesis implies insufficient evidence to provide more than a tentative explanation.

theory implies a greater range of evidence and greater likelihood of truth.

law implies a statement of order and relation in nature that has been found to be invariable under the same conditions.

Examples of hypothesis in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hypothesis.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Greek, from hypotithenai to put under, suppose, from hypo- + tithenai to put — more at do

1641, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

Phrases Containing hypothesis

null hypothesis
planetesimal hypothesis
counter - hypothesis
Whorfian hypothesis
nebular hypothesis

Articles Related to hypothesis

This is the Difference Between a...

This is the Difference Between a Hypothesis and a Theory

In scientific reasoning, they're two completely different things

Dictionary Entries Near hypothesis

hypothermia

hypothesize

Cite this Entry

“Hypothesis.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypothesis. Accessed 11 Apr. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of hypothesis, medical definition, medical definition of hypothesis, more from merriam-webster on hypothesis.

Nglish: Translation of hypothesis for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of hypothesis for Arabic Speakers

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about hypothesis

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"What's the plural of hypothesis?"

The plural of hypothesis is hypotheses .

Definition of hypothesis:

A supposition or assumption based on limited evidence which has yet to be proven or disproven.

Is 'Hypothesis' Plural or Singular?

The plural form of "hypothesis" is "hypotheses." This is because "hypothesis" is a Greek-derived word that follows the rules for forming plurals of Greek-derived words.

In general, Greek-derived words that end in "-is" form the plural by changing the ending to "-es."

The plural of "hypothesis" is "hypotheses" because it is a borrowed word from the Greek language, and it follows the rules of Greek grammar for forming the plural.

In Greek, the plural of "hupothesis," the Greek word from which "hypothesis" is derived, is "hupotheses."

Other examples of Greek-derived words that follow this pattern include "analysis" (singular) and "analyses" (plural), "crisis" (singular) and "crises" (plural), and "thesis" (singular) and "theses" (plural).

The word "hypothesis" comes from the Greek word "hypothesis," which means "base," "foundation," or "assumption."

In scientific contexts, hypotheses are educated guesses or proposed explanations for a phenomenon that is based on limited evidence and is used as a starting point for further investigation.

Plural of Hypothesis Example Sentences

Here are some examples to illustrate the difference between the singular and plural forms of the word "hypothesis":

Singular: " A hypothesis has been proposed to explain the sudden increase in the number of earthquakes in the region" .

Plural: " Two hypotheses have been proposed to explain the sudden increase in the number of earthquakes in the region. One suggests that the earthquakes are caused by tectonic activity, while the other suggests that they are caused by the injection of wastewater into the ground" .

Singular: " The hypothesis that the Earth is flat has been debunked by scientific evidence" .

Plural: " There are many hypotheses about the origins of the universe, but the most widely accepted one is the Big Bang theory" .

Throughout history multiple hypotheses were put forward to explain why objects tended to fall to Earth when dropped. The Greeks believed it was because the Earth was the center of the Universe.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypothesis

What’s the Plural of Hypothesis?

November 19, 2022

The plural of “hypothesis”

The plural of hypothesis is hypotheses (sounds like hi-paw-thuh-sea s).
Hypotheses is the only recognized plural of hypothesis .

What’s with the word hypothesis , and why does it behave the way it does from its singular to plural form? Keep reading.

The correct use of hypotheses (plural) in setences.

What’s the meaning of hypothesis?

Hypothesis comes from the Greek word of the same spelling, hypothesis , meaning, “base, groundwork, foundation”. Hypothesis is made up of the Greek root words, hypo + thesis : “ hypo ” meaning “under” or “placing under”; “ thesis “, meaning “a placing, proposition”, (from Etymonline ).

So, based on the noun’s construction, hypothesis means to put or set forward a thesis or proposal to be subject to further investigating. According to Wikipedia , hypotheses are:

Tentative conjectures explaining an observation, phenomenon or scientific problem that can be tested by further observation, investigation and/or experimentation. Wikipedia on the word hypothesis.

Why is “hypotheses” plural for “hypothesis”?

"Hypothesis" (singular) in sentence examples.

Lots of people confuse the plural of hypothesis , and it’s not tough to see why: hypothesis is an irregular plural noun form that omits the -s/-es of regular plural nouns . Apart from this, the way hypothesis modifies from singular to plural effectively changes the spelling and pronunciation of the word by substituting the -sis as a singular to – ses plural.

Most nouns add an -s/-es to denote plural. Hypothesis , and similar sounding nouns such as crisis , thesis , oasis , nemesis , diagnosis , analysis and so on, all change to -ses in their plural forms.

Nouns that end in “sis”

Each of these irregular plural nouns have another thing in common: they’re all Greek words that use Greek suffixes. So, in case you didn’t know, we all speak a bit of Greek.

Examples of “hypothesis” (singular) in sentences

Other chemists rejected his hypothesis .

What we need is a general hypothesis to explain merger waves.

Their hypothesis is that watching excessive amounts of television reduces a person’s ability to concentrate.

The results of the experiment did not support his hypothesis .

She wrote something to summarize her hypothesis .

Examples of “hypotheses” (plural) in sentences

It will be evident that no direct record of this evolution can be expected, and recourse must be had to hypotheses founded on the indirect evidence available.

The hypotheses which carried it back to the early years of the Christian era have been wholly abandoned.

Various hypotheses have been put forward to explain this increase.

In the above work we have a combination of the redaction and sources hypotheses .

Such hypotheses attend to Aristotle’s philosophy to the neglect of his life.

Synonyms of “hypothesis”

supposition
proposition
explanation
interpretation

Read about other irregular plurals

What’s the plural of bison?
What’s the plural of moose?
What’s the plural of sheep?
What’s the plural of ox?
What’s the plural of cactus?
What’s the plural of crisis?

Origin of “hypothesis”

From etymonline:

1590s, “a particular statement;” 1650s, “a proposition, assumed and taken for granted, used as a premise,” from French hypothese and directly from Late Latin hypothesis , from Greek hypothesis .

Wikipedia hypothesis.
Synonyms for hypothesis.
Hypotheses sentence examples.
Origin of hypothesis.

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What is the Plural of Hypothesis?

What is the plural form of the word "hypothesis"? The plural form (meaning multiples) of the base word "hypothesis" is "hypotheses." Nouns can identify places, people, animals, and other things. They are the basic materials required to construct sentences. There are different types of nouns , including proper nouns , common nouns , compound nouns , collective nouns , abstract nouns , and countable and uncountable nouns.

What is the plural of Hypothesis?

The plural form of the word "hypothesis" is "hypotheses". Forming plural nouns can be difficult. To form the plural form of the word, you'll base it on the last letter or last two letters of the singular word form.

The word "hypothesis" is considered a common noun .

Sentence examples for the plural of "Hypothesis"

Example 1: There are multiple hypotheses.
Example 2: I can see multiple hypotheses.
Example 3: Over there could be more hypotheses.

For more examples, see the definition of the word hypothesis .

My experience with plural forms...

When it comes to plural forms, I was always confused! Just like you, I would be looking up the singular words plural formation...

Here are some really simple tricks that helps me remember plural forms:

Did you know that most plurals are formed by adding an -s to the end of the word? Yes!
If the noun ends in a consonant plus "–y," form the plural by swapping the "–y" for "–ies."
If the noun ends in "–ch," "-s," "-sh," "-x," or "-z," form the plural by adding "–es."

Fact checked: Content is rigorously reviewed by a team of qualified and experienced fact checkers. Fact checkers review articles for factual accuracy, relevance, and timeliness. Learn more.

About the author

Dalia Y.: Dalia is an English Major and linguistics expert with an additional degree in Psychology. Dalia has featured articles on Forbes, Inc, Fast Company, Grammarly, and many more. She covers English, ESL, and all things grammar on GrammarBrain.

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Plural of Hypothesis: The Correct Form for American English

9 December 2023

As a professional copywriting journalist, I often come across language nuances that can be tricky to navigate. One such nuance is the correct plural of “hypothesis” in American English. Understanding and using the correct plural form is crucial for effective communication. Let’s explore this topic further.

The Singular and Plural of Hypothesis

Singular : Hypothesis
Plural : Hypotheses

The plural form of “hypothesis” is “hypotheses.” This transformation follows a common pattern in English where nouns of Greek origin ending in “-is” change to “-es” in the plural.

Understanding Hypothesis

Definition of hypothesis, usage of hypothesis.

In usage, “hypothesis” often implies a level of uncertainty and is used to express an idea that has not yet been proven but is under investigation. In scientific research, hypotheses are subject to rigorous testing and validation.

Use of Hypothesis in Sentences

Singular : “Her hypothesis about the correlation between sleep patterns and productivity was intriguing.”
Plural : “The researchers tested several hypotheses to determine the most effective treatment method.”
Singular : “A good hypothesis should be testable and falsifiable.”
Plural : “ Among the various hypotheses, the one related to environmental factors seemed most plausible.
Singular : “His hypothesis was later proven to be accurate, changing our understanding of the phenomenon .

Common Mistakes and Confusions

Incorrect Plural : Hypothesises, Hypothesi, Hypothesees.
Misinterpretation : Confusing a hypothesis (a proposed explanation) with a theory (a well-substantiated explanation).
Usage in Non-Scientific Context : Sometimes used incorrectly to mean a guess or a hunch, which lacks the structured reasoning of a hypothesis.

Commonly Asked Questions

Q : Can “hypotheses” be used for a single hypothesis? A : No , “hypotheses” is strictly plural and should only be used when referring to more than one hypothesis.
Q : Is the word “hypothesis” used outside scientific contexts? A : Yes, it can be used in everyday language to describe an assumption or idea that is yet to be tested or proven.

Understanding the correct usage of “hypothesis” and its plural form “hypotheses” is essential for clear and accurate communication, especially in scientific and academic settings. Remembering this distinction helps maintain the precision so crucial in these domains, thereby facilitating effective discourse and knowledge exchange.

What is the plural of “hypothesis”?

The plural of “hypothesis” is “hypotheses.”

How are hypotheses used in scientific research?

Hypotheses are used as provisional explanations for phenomena in scientific research and guide investigations.

What is the importance of using the correct plural form for “hypothesis”?

Using the correct plural form, “hypotheses,” adheres to the Greek root of the word and ensures clarity and accuracy in communication.

Are there any alternative plural forms for “hypothesis”?

No, there are no alternative plural forms for “hypothesis” in American English.

Are there any spelling and grammar rules for forming plurals that apply to “hypothesis”?

The plural form “hypotheses” follows the rule for nouns ending in “is” by changing the “is” to “es,” reflecting its Greek origin.

How do hypotheses differ from theories and laws?

A hypothesis is a provisional explanation, while theories and laws are more established and comprehensive explanations of phenomena.

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The Plural of Hypothesis: Here’s What It Is and How to Use It

Ever get stuck wondering what the plural form of hypothesis is in English? Perfect! This article will tell you just that plus give more facts about the word hypothesis, synonyms like a thesaurus, examples, and the history of the word. You will no doubt be an expert on all things surrounding the word hypothesis by the end of this article.

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What Is The Definition Of Hypothesis

As found in the Meriam Webster Dictionary

An assumption or concession made for the sake of argument
an interpretation of a practical situation or condition taken as the ground for action
a tentative assumption made in order to draw out and test its logical or empirical consequences
the antecedent clause of a conditional statement

As found in the Cambridge Dictionary

an idea or explanation for something that is based on known facts but has not yet been proved: several hypotheses for global warming have been suggested.

In “The Origin of Hypothesis” it is phrased as a ‘scientific guess’. In the context of science, a hypothesis is a placeholder for a theory until it is proven by science to be accurate.

A scientific hypothesis sed to explain something occurring in our universe that currently does not fit into our current available scientific theories. Scientific hypotheses also include null hypothesis, working hypothesis, and alternative hypothesis.

History and Origin of The Word

From the Greek hypotithenai to put under, suppose, from hypo- + tithenai to put. The first use of the word hypothesis can be traced back to 1596. Issac Newton actually rejected the hypothesis, he said “Hypotheses non fingo” which translates to “I Frame no hypotheses”. This was back in 1721 in Issac Newton’s book “Opticks, or A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light”

What Is More Than One Hypothesis Called?

The plural form of the hypothesis is hypotheses. This is the only way in the English language to make hypothesis plural. Because of the Greek origin, the rule of making a noun that ends in “is” to change it to “es.”

Assumption – Something taken for granted
Postulate- suggest or assume the existence, fact, or truth of (something) as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or belief
Rationale – Logic for belief, action
Previous observations- things that were seen or experienced in the past
Supposition – guess, belief
Theorem – explanation based on hypothesis and experiments done by experimenters using the scientific method
Thesis – belief, assumption to be tested
Conjecture – speculation, assumption
Conclusion – end
Tentative Explanation – clarification; reason
Guess – belief, speculation
Interpretation – understanding
Premise – hypothesis, argument

What Is The Difference Between Hypothesis and Theory?

Since we now know that a hypothesis is a guess or assumption, how is that different from a theory? The definition of a theory is “a supposition or system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained”.

Although we might think of a theory as something that has not been 100% proven, its definition in the application of science is something that has been tested as an explanation for things occurring. It is still an explanation that is thought of as true until proven otherwise, the difference here is that a hypothesis is thought to explain something not yet tested and could also be thought of as an unproved theory or suggested explanation.

Follow these examples to see the difference in action:

Fact: “The clouds are dark outside.”
Hypothesis: “It might storm today.”
Theory: “Rain clouds are dark because of their particulate density. The denser the water droplets are in the cloud the more light will be scattered, which will lead to a darker appearance.”
Fact: “Light roast coffee has more caffeine than dark roast coffee”
Hypothesis: “I should drink a cup of light roast coffee if I want more caffeine”
Theory: “During the roasting process caffeine is slowly burned off, therefore it is true that light roast coffee has more caffeine. You should however choose dark roast if you want more caffeine per cup because although per bean light roast has more caffeine, per gram of coffee dark roast contains more caffeine. This is because you have to consider the percent of weight loss that occurs with roasting a coffee to a dark level, which is higher than the percent of caffeine lost, therefore you have more caffeine per gram in dark roast over light roast, only by a minuscule amount.”

What Is The Difference Between An Idea and Hypothesis?

Since a hypothesis is an idea that can be tested, here are some examples of what is just an idea and can’t be tested followed by a similar idea that can be tested and is a hypothesis.

Idea: Biden would be a better president vs Trump – Can not be tested since we have no data.
Hypothesis: Obama did a better job at fixing unemployment vs Bush – can be tested by looking at the data.
Idea: I could have been the best disc golfer if I started playing when I was a kid – Impossible to test
Hypothesis: Paul McBeth probably hit more circle 2 putts on tour last year than Ricky Wysocki. – Can be proven by looking at the data for all their putts on the PDGA tour last year.

Example Sentences In Context

The following are examples of hypothesis in context:

“We came up with the assumptions and then narrowed them down to one hypothesis for each category.” – Forbes

“The notion of hypothesis testing has recently invaded the practice of entrepreneurship as a tool to construct of new ventures” – Forbes

“There’s not one unifying hypothesis as to why, but there’s probably five to 20 different things that have contributed to it.” – USA Today

“Most thinkers or hypothesists of any degree of sobriety allow, that an hypothesis…is not to be received as probably true because it accounts for all the known phenomena since this is a condition sometimes fulfilled tolerably well by two conflicting hypotheses…while there are probably a thousand more which are equally possible, but which, for want of anything analogous in our experience, our minds are unfitted to conceive” – Underdetermination of Scientific Theory

“The expensive tissue hypothesis was focused on human brains and it was never intended as a one-size-fits-all possible explanation that applied across all mammals. The original paper even said that “the cost of the additional brain tissue could have been met by strategies other than a reduction in gut size.” – National Geographic

Kevin Miller is a growth marketer with an extensive background in Search Engine Optimization, paid acquisition and email marketing. He is also an online editor and writer based out of Los Angeles, CA. He studied at Georgetown University, worked at Google and became infatuated with English Grammar and for years has been diving into the language, demystifying the do's and don'ts for all who share the same passion! He can be found online here.

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Meaning of hypothesis in English

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abstraction
afterthought
anthropocentrism
anti-Darwinian
exceptionalism
foundation stone
great minds think alike idiom
non-dogmatic
non-empirical
non-material
non-practical
social Darwinism
supersensible
the domino theory

hypothesis | American Dictionary

Hypothesis | business english, examples of hypothesis, translations of hypothesis.

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singing or playing notes that are at the right pitch (= level) or that agree with others being sung or played

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A Comprehensive Analysis of The Plural Forms of Hypothesis

“Hypothesis” is often a word that sends shivers down the spines of students and makes professors’ eyes light up. Maybe because it has a fancy Greek root (“hypo” = under, “thesis” = placing). And the plural is not as straightforward as adding an “s” at the end.

No, no, no. We’re dealing with a word that loves to keep things interesting. Gladly, this article is about to crack this nut open like a science experiment.

READ ALSO: Analyzing The Plural of Analysis; A Comprehensive Guide

0.1 Now, here’s the deal
0.2 You need to understand this
0.3 Now, here’s the thing
0.4 A closer look at the verdict
0.5 Now, let’s get creative with some examples
1 Final Thoughts

Now, here’s the deal

The usual suspect for the plural of “hypothesis” is “hypotheses”. Yes, just add that “-es” ending and you’re good to go. Most dictionaries will give you this as the go-to plural form, and it’s perfectly acceptable in most situations.

You can confidently say things like, “The researchers tested several hypotheses” or “My cat has a million hypotheses about where his missing yarn ball went.”

You need to understand this

Just like a good scientific study, we gotta consider alternative explanations. See, “hypothesis” comes from Greek, and in Greek, there’s this whole other way of making plurals for words ending in “-sis.”

It involves adding “-ses” instead of “-es.” Some folks, especially those with a deep love for the classics, prefer to stick to this Greek-y plural form.

So, you might encounter “hypotheseses” in academic writing or among language enthusiasts.

READ ALSO: Abbreviating Continued; What You Need To Know

Now, here’s the thing

While “hypotheseses” is technically correct, it’s not exactly common in everyday speech. It can sound a bit stuffy like you’re trying to show off your fancy vocabulary.

Unless you’re writing a dissertation on ancient Greek grammar, “hypotheses” is the safer bet. But, if you’re feeling fly and want to impress your professor with your linguistic prowess, go for it!

Just be prepared for some raised eyebrows and maybe even a chuckle or two.

A closer look at the verdict

Ultimately, the choice is yours, my friend.

Whether you stick to the classic “hypotheses” or take a walk on the wild side with “hypotheseses,” just remember: the important thing is to understand the concept behind the pluralization and to use it with confidence.

Now, let’s get creative with some examples

How can we use the plural of hypothesis in a sentence without getting some raised eyebrow?

READ ALSO: Exploring The Differences Between Heros and Heroes

Here are a few examples :

“The scientist’s mind buzzed with a swarm of hypotheses, each vying for dominance in the petri dish of her imagination.” “The artist stared at the blank canvas, her brush poised like a question mark, ready to give birth to a constellation of hypotheses.”

Did you see how the plural form adds a touch of intrigue, a hint of possibility, to the scene? It’s like sprinkling magic dust on your writing, transforming it from a dull monologue to a vibrant, multi-faceted dialogue.

Final Thoughts

Now you have it! The plural of “hypothesis” laid bare. It is time to go forth and spread your newfound knowledge, one hypothesis (or maybe even hypotheseses) at a time!

The goal is to clearly reach out to your audience without flooding your writing or sentences with grammatical errors.

Hypothesis Plural, What is the plural of Hypothesis?

Meaning: a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence.

Table of Contents

Plural of Hypothesis

Hypothesis as a singular noun in example sentences:.

The scientist formulated a testable hypothesis for the experiment.
She proposed an intriguing hypothesis about the origin of the universe.
The researcher conducted experiments to confirm the hypothesis .
He presented his hypothesis at the conference.
The professor challenged the students to develop their own hypotheses .
The study aimed to support or refute the initial hypothesis .
The team analyzed the data to evaluate the validity of the hypothesis .
She revised her hypothesis based on the new evidence.
The findings supported the researcher’s original hypothesis .
The scientific community debated the merits of the controversial hypothesis .

Hypothesis as a Plural Noun in Example Sentences:

The scientists proposed different hypotheses to explain the phenomenon.
They tested multiple hypotheses to determine the cause.
The research team presented their competing hypotheses .
He explored various hypotheses to solve the puzzle.
The study aimed to compare and contrast different hypotheses .
They analyzed the results to reject or support the alternative hypotheses .
The conference focused on discussing new and groundbreaking hypotheses .
She conducted surveys to gather data for her hypotheses .
The researchers published their hypotheses in scientific journals.
The team collaborated to develop innovative and testable hypotheses .

Singular Possessive of Hypothesis:

The singular possessive form of “Hypothesis” is “Hypothesis’s”.

Examples of Singular Possessive Form of Hypothesis:

The scientist presented the Hypothesis’s findings to the committee.
The researcher conducted experiments to test the Hypothesis’s validity.
The professor analyzed the Hypothesis’s implications for the field.
The student proposed a counterargument to the Hypothesis’s claims.
The team reviewed the Hypothesis’s assumptions and methodology.
The paper discussed the Hypothesis’s relevance to current research.
The doctor formulated the Hypothesis’s potential treatment applications.
The statistician calculated the Hypothesis’s probability of being true.
The psychologist tested the Hypothesis’s predictions through experiments.
The scholar evaluated the Hypothesis’s impact on existing theories.

Plural Possessive of Hypothesis:

The plural possessive form of “Hypothesis” is “Hypotheses'”.

Examples of Plural Possessive Form of Hypothesis:

The researchers analyzed the Hypotheses’ conflicting conclusions.
The scientists presented the Hypotheses’ evidence at the conference.
The professors debated the Hypotheses’ implications for the field.
The team reviewed the Hypotheses’ statistical significance.
The students conducted experiments to test the Hypotheses’ predictions.
The philosophers discussed the Hypotheses’ philosophical underpinnings.
The scholars compared the Hypotheses’ methodologies and results.
The researchers examined the Hypotheses’ validity across different populations.
The statisticians analyzed the Hypotheses’ correlation coefficients.
The psychologists proposed alternative Hypotheses’ explanations.

Explore Related Nouns:

Complete List of Singular Plurals

Last updated on June 10th, 2023 at 08:32 pm

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Methodology

How to Write a Strong Hypothesis | Steps & Examples

How to Write a Strong Hypothesis | Steps & Examples

Published on May 6, 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on November 20, 2023.

A hypothesis is a statement that can be tested by scientific research. If you want to test a relationship between two or more variables, you need to write hypotheses before you start your experiment or data collection .

Example: Hypothesis

Daily apple consumption leads to fewer doctor’s visits.

What is a hypothesis, developing a hypothesis (with example), hypothesis examples, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about writing hypotheses.

A hypothesis states your predictions about what your research will find. It is a tentative answer to your research question that has not yet been tested. For some research projects, you might have to write several hypotheses that address different aspects of your research question.

A hypothesis is not just a guess – it should be based on existing theories and knowledge. It also has to be testable, which means you can support or refute it through scientific research methods (such as experiments, observations and statistical analysis of data).

Variables in hypotheses

Hypotheses propose a relationship between two or more types of variables .

An independent variable is something the researcher changes or controls.
A dependent variable is something the researcher observes and measures.

If there are any control variables , extraneous variables , or confounding variables , be sure to jot those down as you go to minimize the chances that research bias will affect your results.

In this example, the independent variable is exposure to the sun – the assumed cause . The dependent variable is the level of happiness – the assumed effect .

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Step 1. ask a question.

Writing a hypothesis begins with a research question that you want to answer. The question should be focused, specific, and researchable within the constraints of your project.

Step 2. Do some preliminary research

Your initial answer to the question should be based on what is already known about the topic. Look for theories and previous studies to help you form educated assumptions about what your research will find.

At this stage, you might construct a conceptual framework to ensure that you’re embarking on a relevant topic . This can also help you identify which variables you will study and what you think the relationships are between them. Sometimes, you’ll have to operationalize more complex constructs.

Step 3. Formulate your hypothesis

Now you should have some idea of what you expect to find. Write your initial answer to the question in a clear, concise sentence.

4. Refine your hypothesis

You need to make sure your hypothesis is specific and testable. There are various ways of phrasing a hypothesis, but all the terms you use should have clear definitions, and the hypothesis should contain:

The relevant variables
The specific group being studied
The predicted outcome of the experiment or analysis

5. Phrase your hypothesis in three ways

To identify the variables, you can write a simple prediction in if…then form. The first part of the sentence states the independent variable and the second part states the dependent variable.

In academic research, hypotheses are more commonly phrased in terms of correlations or effects, where you directly state the predicted relationship between variables.

If you are comparing two groups, the hypothesis can state what difference you expect to find between them.

6. Write a null hypothesis

If your research involves statistical hypothesis testing , you will also have to write a null hypothesis . The null hypothesis is the default position that there is no association between the variables. The null hypothesis is written as H 0 , while the alternative hypothesis is H 1 or H a .

H 0 : The number of lectures attended by first-year students has no effect on their final exam scores.
H 1 : The number of lectures attended by first-year students has a positive effect on their final exam scores.

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Sampling methods
Simple random sampling
Stratified sampling
Cluster sampling
Likert scales
Reproducibility

Statistics

Null hypothesis
Statistical power
Probability distribution
Effect size
Poisson distribution

Research bias

Optimism bias
Cognitive bias
Implicit bias
Hawthorne effect
Anchoring bias
Explicit bias

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A hypothesis is not just a guess — it should be based on existing theories and knowledge. It also has to be testable, which means you can support or refute it through scientific research methods (such as experiments, observations and statistical analysis of data).

Null and alternative hypotheses are used in statistical hypothesis testing . The null hypothesis of a test always predicts no effect or no relationship between variables, while the alternative hypothesis states your research prediction of an effect or relationship.

Hypothesis testing is a formal procedure for investigating our ideas about the world using statistics. It is used by scientists to test specific predictions, called hypotheses , by calculating how likely it is that a pattern or relationship between variables could have arisen by chance.

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McCombes, S. (2023, November 20). How to Write a Strong Hypothesis | Steps & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved April 11, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/hypothesis/

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What is the singular form of hypothesis?

The form hypothe sis is the singular form. The plural form is hypothe ses .

Add your answer:

What is the plural of hypotheses?

Hypotheses is the plural. The singular form is hypothesis.

What is the singular form of binoculars?

it is already in its singular form.

What is singular form of stimuli?

The singular form in stimulus.

What is the singular form of cavities?

The singular is cavity.

What is plural form of hypothesis?

What is the singular form for hypothesis.

Hypothesis is the singular form. The plural is hypotheses.

What is the singular form of hyphothesis?

The singular form of "hypothysis" is "hypothesis."

What is the singular form and plural form of hypothesis?

Hypothesis (high-POTH-uh-siss) is singular. Hypotheses (high-POTH-uh-seez) is plural.

What is plural of hypotheses?

Plural of hypothesis.

Singular: hypothesis Plural: hypotheses

How do you spell hypothisses?

The word is spelled hypothesis as the singular form. The scientist argued that his hypothesis was the only correct one. The plural of hypothesis is hypotheses. Other scientists argued that there were many hypotheses that could be correct.

What is the Difference between hypothesis and hypotheses?

Hypothesis is singular, while Hypotheses is the plural of Hypothesis.

Is hypotheses a plural or singular term?

'Hypotheses' is plural; the singular would be 'hypothesis'.

Plural form of hypothesis?

it's theses: pronounced (thee-sees)

How do you spell hypthsis?

The word is spelled hypothesis, singular, meaning one hypothesis. Two or more are hypotheses.

What should you do after you form a hypothesis?

test your hypothesis.

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English Teacher Site

Whats the Plural of Thesis: Understanding Singular and Plural Forms

The plural of “thesis” adheres to the Greek-rooted pattern, changing the singular -is to a plural -es.
Accurate use of “thesis” and “theses” reflects scholarly precision in both written and oral communication.
Awareness of correct pluralization extends to other similar nouns ending in -sis, emphasizing the importance of understanding language origins.

It is crucial to use the word correctly in both singular and plural contexts to maintain the integrity of written and spoken communication. In the realm of academics, precision in language reflects the rigor of one’s research and argumentation. As such, understanding the transformation from “thesis” to its plural counterpart is more than a trivial detail; it reflects a deeper appreciation for the structure and history of the English language.

What’s the Plural of Thesis?

The proper plural of thesis is “theses.” This transformation is part of a broader pattern in the English language where certain nouns change their ending to reflect a plural state.

Below, a comparison is made to illustrate the standard singular to plural transformation for nouns ending in -is:

Key Points about the pluralization of “thesis”:

The plural follows a specific rule of changing the ‘-is’ ending to ‘-es’.
This pattern is consistent with other Greek-derived words.
The pronunciation changes with the plural form, ending in “-eez.”

To clarify usage, consider these examples:

Singular: The student’s thesis was commended for its clarity.
Plural: The professor read all the submitted theses before the conference.

Singular Form of Thesis

The singular form of ‘thesis’ is of notable interest due to its origins and distinct pluralization.

Origination and Definition:

Etymology : Derived from the ancient Greek word τίθημι (tithēmi), which means “to put” or “to place.”
Meaning : It is a statement or theory put forward to be maintained or proved.

Usage in Academia:

A significant piece of writing prepared by a student to obtain a university degree or diploma.
Often involves original research and substantiates a particular view or argument.

Table 1: Notable Features of ‘Thesis’

Table 2: Contextual Examples

Definition of Thesis

A thesis is a substantial piece of scholarly writing that is typically required to obtain a master’s or doctoral degree. It represents the author’s research and findings in their chosen field of study. A thesis serves as evidence that the student has acquired the knowledge necessary to be considered a scholar in the field. Here, two key aspects of a thesis will be described through tables:

Purpose and Composition of a Thesis:

Characteristics of a Thesis:

Focused : It should have a clear, concise premise or central argument.
Researched : Employs rigorous methodologies to gather and analyze data.
Structured : Contains defined sections that present information logically.
Cited : Includes proper citations of sources that support or contrast the thesis.
Reviewed : Undergoes scrutiny by academic peers or supervisors.

Other Irregular Plural Nouns Ending in -sis/ses

Below you will find two tables categorized by common and less common irregular plurals that follow this pattern.

Common Irregular Plurals:

This pattern is often observed with words that have Greek origins.

Less Common Irregular Plurals:

It is important to recognize these forms to maintain grammatical accuracy in writing and speech. Below is a list of examples used in sentences:

When multiple scientific hypotheses are tested, the results can lead to important discoveries.
During the editing process, Jane had to review all the parentheses to ensure clarity in her writing.
Geographers study multiple oases in the desert to understand these unique ecosystems.
His thesis on renewable energy was well-received, and many theses on the subject reference his work.

Examples of Thesis (Singular) in Sentences

Here are examples that demonstrate its usage in various sentences.

In Academic Context

In everyday discourse.

Informal setting : During the debate, his thesis was that space exploration is no longer just a dream but a necessity.

Discussing beliefs : Her thesis is that all public spaces should offer free Wi-Fi.
Opinion : They argued the thesis that high taxes discourage spending.

Examples of Theses (Plural) in Sentences

Here are some examples of how “theses” can be used in sentences:

Education Setting : Graduate students often struggle to find unique topics for their theses as most ideas have been extensively explored.

Evaluating the structure and arguments of different theses can help one build a stronger dissertation.

Origin of the Word Thesis

The term thesis originates from the ancient Greek word θέσις (thésis), which means “a proposition” . Historically, this term has played a crucial role in both rhetorical and academic contexts. It denotes a statement that a writer intends to support and prove. In academic circles, thesis often refers to a document that presents the author’s research and findings and is submitted in support of candidature for a degree or professional qualification.

Etymological Background

The journey of the word from its Greek roots to the modern English language reflects the changing dynamics of educational and scholarly practices over the centuries.

As a carryover from Greek to Latin, the word made its way into English, maintaining its original Greek plural form:

Usage in Academia

In academia, the word has been used since the late Middle Ages to denote a scholarly work written by students aiming to obtain a university degree. Over time, the use of thesis expanded from merely referring to a proposition to a lengthy document providing evidence of comprehensive research.

Historical Evolution:

Middle Ages : Referred to propositions for a degree.
Renaissance : Emphasized individual research.
Modern Usage : Extensive research documents for higher education degrees.

Areas of Impact:

Rhetoric : Considered as a premise to be argued.
Academic Research : Reflects comprehensive study in a field.

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Research Article

Liking music with and without sadness: Testing the direct effect hypothesis of pleasurable negative emotion

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Empirical Musicology Laboratory, School of the Arts and Media, UNSW Australia, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Emery Schubert

Published: April 10, 2024
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299115
Reader Comments

Negative emotion evoked in listeners of music can produce intense pleasure, but we do not fully understand why. The present study addressed the question by asking participants (n = 50) to self-select a piece of sadness-evoking music that was loved. The key part of the study asked participants to imagine that the felt sadness could be removed. Overall participants reported performing the task successfully. They also indicated that the removal of the sadness reduced their liking of the music, and 82% of participants reported that the evoked sadness also adds to the enjoyment of the music. The study provided evidence for a “Direct effect hypothesis”, which draws on the multicomponent model of emotion, where a component of the negative emotion is experienced as positive during music (and other aesthetic) experiences. Earlier evidence of a mediator, such as ‘being moved’, as the source of enjoyment was reinterpreted in light of the new findings. Instead, the present study applied a semantic overlap explanation, arguing that sadness primes emotions that share meaning with sadness, such as being-moved. The priming occurs if the overlap in meaning is sufficient. The degree of semantic overlap was defined empirically. The present study therefore suggests that mediator-based explanations need to be treated with caution both as a finding of the study, and because of analytic limitations in earlier research that are discussed in the paper.

Citation: Schubert E (2024) Liking music with and without sadness: Testing the direct effect hypothesis of pleasurable negative emotion. PLoS ONE 19(4): e0299115. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299115

Editor: Maja Vukadinovic, Novi Sad School of Business, SERBIA

Received: December 5, 2023; Accepted: February 5, 2024; Published: April 10, 2024

Copyright: © 2024 Emery Schubert. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: Data contain potentially identifying or sensitive participant information because open ended responses about personal experiences to music could have been reported. The decision to restrict data sharing was part of the approval given by the institutional ethics committee. The email contact for the institutional ethics advisory committee that granted approval for this design is [email protected] .

Funding: Initials of the authors who received each award: ES Grant numbers awarded to each author: FT120100053 (ES) The full name of each funder: Australian Research Council URL of each funder website: https://www.arc.gov.au/ Did the sponsors or funders play any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript?: No.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

A considerable portion of the population (estimates ranging from around 25% to 50%) will report that music they love can also make them feel negative emotions such as sadness [ 1 – 6 ]. This finding has mystified researchers. How can a loved activity simultaneously produce a negative feeling, and yet lead the same individual to eagerly seek out the experience?

The Indirect effect hypothesis

Much theorising has been proposed to explain the conundrum as it applies to music listening and the contemplation of the arts in general. A dominating approach argues that the ‘sadness’ (the negative emotion that is the focus of the current investigation, and one that has received much attention) evoked by the music serves some non-negative purpose. The negative emotion is not in and of itself enjoyed. We will refer to such explanations as part of the ‘Indirect effect hypothesis’, meaning that a negative emotion such as sadness itself cannot or should not directly play a role in the generation of pleasure. The Indirect effect hypothesis is old, with written origins in Aristotle’s concept of catharsis from 4 th century BCE–where certain negative emotions in response to the arts act as a psychic cleanser, which removes bad or negative emotions from the soul [ 7 , 8 ]. The enduring concept of catharsis suggests an Indirect effect hypothesis because the negative emotion itself is not enjoyed directly. Rather, it is the cleansing, or the product of the cleansing that feels good. (Please note that in this article, the terms enjoyment, pleasure, feels-good, preferred, loved and liked are treated, more or less, as substitutable synonyms; see [ 9 ]) The negative impact of the emotion is thus compensated for by the positive effect on the soul or, in early 21 st century parlance, the mind.

A more recent version of the Indirect effect hypothesis is that sadness produces pleasure indirectly by triggering an intermediary step, sometimes referred to as a ‘mediator’. ‘Being moved’, for example, has been reported as the underlying reason for listening to otherwise sad music. Being moved can be seen as consisting of positive aspects, in addition to negative aspects [ 10 – 13 ]. It is the positive aspects of being moved that are responsible for the pleasure of the otherwise sadness-inducing music. Such explanations argue that the negative emotion occurs alongside a mediator, and so itself is not the direct cause of the positive aspects of the experience, thus eradicating the paradoxical aspect of the phenomenon.

A common technique to test the Indirect effect hypothesis is to ask participants to listen to a piece of music and rate the felt sadness and enjoyment experienced, in addition to rating the alleged mediator. If the enjoyment ratings are correlated with the mediator, and provided this correlation is overall stronger than is sadness with enjoyment, we have evidence, albeit correlational, that the mediator is the direct cause of the liking, not the sadness, supporting the Indirect effect hypothesis. To date, being moved has produced the strongest evidence of mediating sadness [ 3 , 14 – 16 ]. But other contenders that have been proposed, including beauty, wonder and nostalgia [for an overview, see 3 , 17 ].

Limitations of the Indirect effect hypothesis

An inherent weakness of Indirect effect hypothesis, and in particular the mediator-based explanation, is that it does not consider the phenomenal experience of the individual who claims that they both experience sadness, and that the sadness itself, for them, forms at least part of the pleasure [e.g., 6 ]. There are also limitations with research methods that are used to test the mediator explanation in the extant literature, as elucidated in the Method section.

Another limitation specifically concerns the mediator driven approach because it does not explain why the negative emotion would be present at all if it is the mediator that is driving the pleasure. If music is pleasurable because it is moving, and not because it evokes sadness, why would the listener not just seek the music that is moving but not sadness evoking? Is it because the mediator generates the negative (sad) emotion, as a by-product? But this would suggest that the occurrence of enjoyed negative emotion experiences such as sadness in response to music should be nothing more than an outlier, and be rarely reported as an enjoyed part of the experience (presumably well under the 25% of reports that are typical of published research, as indicated at the Introduction). Mediation theory therefore only explains why listeners claim to enjoy felt negative emotions to a limited extent. An alternative explanation is worth considering, and here the Direct effect hypothesis is proposed.

The Direct effect hypothesis

The Direct effect hypothesis argues that there is something intrinsic about felt negative emotion evoked by music that attracts the listener, without mandating a mediator or some factor outside the negative emotion itself. The presence of accompanying affects (such as being moved) are not excluded, but they are not essential. One line of research that supports this hypothesis is the link between individual differences and enjoyment of sad music. Such research does not exclude the Indirect effect account, but it does suggest that individual factors attract the listener to sadness in music, raising the possibility that there is something peculiar about some negative emotions that allow them to be enjoyed in their own right.

Strong contenders for the disposition of people who enjoy the sadness evoked by music are empathisers, fantasisers, ruminators, those who demonstrate an openness to experience, and those with a high propensity to fall into states of absorption [ 2 , 3 , 16 , 18 – 22 ]. Current thinking is that these personal characteristics, especially empathising, absorption and openness to experience, allow the individual to connect with fictional narratives while suspending disbelief, and so exhibit a good capacity to “make-believe” [ 23 , 24 ], a capacity which generalises to emotions in music listening [e.g., see 16 , 25 – 27 ]. This explanation also presents an alternative theoretical perspective to the above cited literature, because rather than presenting sadness as a mere by-product of mediation or as a means to some beneficial end, the sadness can be ‘enjoyed’ for its own sake (directly). It is not real-sadness, but a make-believe, or aesthetic, kind of sadness, still experienced as sadness, but with some real-life negative aspect of the sadness not triggered [ 28 ].

The Direct effect hypothesis has a theoretical foundation. Emotion researchers such as Frijda [ 29 ] and Scherer [ 30 ] have conceptualised emotion as consisting of multiple phases or components operating in synchrony. This view is both reflective of contemporary understandings of emotion, and defined networks in the brain. In one instantiation of a componential model, Sander, Grandjean and Scherer [ 31 ] proposed five components/networks of emotion building on Scherer’s model: ‘Expression’ (e.g., a facial expression that communicates the emotion), ‘Action Tendency’ (e.g., motivation to approach toward, or flee from the cause of the emotion), ‘Autonomic Reaction’ (e.g., changed heart rate), ‘Feeling’ (what the emotion feels-like, such as ‘I feel sadness’) and ‘Elicitation’ (the internally triggered cause of the emotion through interpretation of environmental situation, association and instinct) such as prolonged loneliness eliciting sadness.

In the case of the enjoyment of negative emotions Schubert [ 32 ] proposed that when contemplating aesthetic stimuli the Action tendency component of an emotion is experienced as positive (motivation to approach) while other components remain as they would for real-life, non-aesthetic experiences of such emotions. The individual is not compelled to act in a withdrawn or aversive manner to the stimulus or event under contemplation because the perceiver has an implicit awareness that it is presented in an aesthetic or make-believe context. This dissociated response occurs because the individual has an intrinsic understanding of the safe, make-believe context in which the causal stimulus/event is perceived [ 33 – 35 ].

Limitations of the direct effect hypothesis

The Direct effect hypothesis of enjoyment of negative emotion has arguably been difficult to test. If emotions happen to be correlated (such as sadness and being moved), researchers typically take this as an indication in favour of the Indirect effect hypothesis. But such interpretations do not exclude the possibility that the enjoyment directly stems from the sadness. While there is some evidence that those who enjoy negative emotion in music are indeed enjoying the negative emotion, there has been little systematic investigation of the experiential aspect of enjoyment of negative emotion in music. Other approaches to falsifying the Direct effect hypothesis are needed.

The approach taken in the present research is in the form of an ‘empirical thought experiment’, which has origins in so-called experimental philosophy [ 36 ]. Thought experiments, also referred to as mental simulation or ‘prefactual thinking’, rely on the participant’s capacity to imagine a situation and provide a response to that situation. The method can be particularly useful when a real-life stimulus-effect manipulation of interest is not possible or ethically compromising [e.g., 37 ]. It has been applied successfully to the empirical investigation of a range or research questions [ 38 ] and, of relevance here, to scenarios involving mental simulation of emotions [ 39 – 42 ].

Probing listeners to mentally simulate manipulating aspects of sadness induced by music is a simple approach to address both the Direct and Indirect effect hypotheses of enjoyment of experienced negative emotion in music. In brief, if a listener reports experiencing the sadness induced by a piece of music as pleasurable, the thought experiment to address the question of interest (to test if the sadness is the cause of the pleasure) is to ask the participant to imagine that the felt sadness, and only the felt sadness, can somehow be removed. If enjoyment is consequently diminished (as a result of the mentally simulated, excised sadness), the Direct effect hypothesis will be supported. Assurances would need to be set in place that the sadness was experienced (felt) and not just expressed by the music [ 43 ], and that the music was responsible for triggering the sadness, not some (extramusical) association (as discussed in the Method section).

The aim of this study was to investigate whether negative emotion in music, in this case sadness, can be both experienced and enjoyed. Two competing hypotheses were tested:

H1 –the Indirect effect hypothesis, which predicts that: Sadness removed from a liked piece of music will increase or not change enjoyment. This is because it is not the sadness that is enjoyed, but something external to the sadness, such as being moved or some other mediator.

H2 –the Direct effect hypothesis predicts that: Sadness removed from a liked piece of sadness will decrease enjoyment. This is because the sadness itself is somehow enjoyed, regardless of the impact of correlated variables (such as being moved, etc.).

Methodological and data analysis issues

This preamble to the method examines four key issues encountered in extant methods and data-analysis conventions stemming from controversy about use of experimenter- versus participant-selected stimuli. These issues are: Confounding extramusical association, Phenomenon of interest, Demand characteristics and Prospective mediators. This is followed by a discussion of problems that have emerged in experimenter-selected stimulus, and, as a result, a justification for the use of participant-selected music is then presented.

Confounding extramusical association.

There has been growing consensus that investigations of enjoyed sadness in music should be assessed through experimenter-selected music. Participant- or ‘self’-selected music has the disadvantage that the music can have personal or other non-musical associations, meaning that it is not the music that is directly responsible for triggering sadness, but previously formed, ‘extramusical’ associations with the music. Self-selected music could therefore lead to confounding extramusical associations that evoke sadness: the music acting as a mere go-between with the external cause of the sadness and the experience of sadness, and therefore potentially lead to false conclusion of negative emotion being caused by the music. Furthermore, self-selected music does not assure that findings would be generalisable to other participants who did not self-select the same piece. Self-selected music is inevitably music that is familiar. Personal meanings and associations with familiar music could well lead to idiosyncratic responses, peculiar to one or a small number of individuals [for a detailed discussion on limitations in use of familiar music, see 44 ].

Although one of the main drivers for using experimenter-selected music is to avoid confounding extramusical associations , it is possible that even for unfamiliar (experimenter-selected) music a participant will have an emotional response to music because it triggers an external factor, rather than emanating from the music itself [ 45 ]. For example, while Day and Thompson [ 46 ] found that familiar music is more successful at evoking visual imagery (and hence increasing the likelihood of extramusical emotional associations), they also observed the important role of fluency, where music that is complex (low in fluency) is more likely to trigger visual imagery than music that is less complex (high in fluency), regardless of familiarity. Furthermore, autobiographical memories have been reported to be triggered by unfamiliar music, although to a lesser extent than familiar music [ 47 , 48 , see also 49 ]. Thus experimenter-selected music can help to diminish the likelihood of data pollution through confounding extramusical associations , even if not eliminate it.

Phenomenon of interest.

Use of unfamiliar music that is rated by an independent panel, or some other means, as evoking sadness and being pleasurable has been proposed to remedy the problem of confounding extramusical association [e.g., 14 , 16 ]. However, this approach also has its shortcomings. Others deciding what music is likely to evoke sadness will not necessarily evoke sadness to a sufficient degree in a randomly sampled participant to address the phenomenon of interest (enjoyment of evoked negative emotion in music). It is well documented that familiar music can evoke stronger emotions than unfamiliar music, with self-selected music being a particularly effective way to elicit the strong emotions [e.g., 43 , 50 – 56 ]. Similarly, others deciding what music someone likes is riddled with problems. Music preference calls into play several factors such as familiarity [ 57 ], making the assumption of an absolute, objective rating of pleasure in response to a given piece of music problematic. This constitutes a considerable drawback of experimenter-selected design because additional precautions need to be taken to assure that participant experiences capture the phenomenon of interest (both strong liking and experiencing of sadness), as discussed below.

Demand characteristics.

Another problem with self-selected music is that it may attract demand characteristics bias. This bias can occur when the participant infers the research question [ 58 , 59 ]. For self-selected music the research objective can be inferred by the participant, in particular if they are asked to select music that they love that also evokes sadness. In this situation, the participant may guess that the study is concerned with enjoyment and experiencing sadness. If consciously or subconsciously they wish to please the experimenter, they may inflate their assessment of the amount of enjoyment the music generates or the amount of sadness it evokes or both. Furthermore, during participant recruiting, if mention is made that people are sought who experience sadness in response to loved music, it is self-evident that the participant pool will be biased, because only those who have the targeted experience are likely to participate, overlooking the opportunity to estimate how common the phenomenon is in a general population.

Prospective mediators.

Overall, the studies adopting experimenter-selected designs have used interval rating scale measurements of the variables of interest (enjoyment, sadness, and the prospective mediator variables, such as being moved). In addition, other variables are rated to help reduce the likelihood that the participant will successfully intuit the aim of the study, and to capture information about alternative, prospective mediators. Interval rating scales have the advantage of being convenient for correlation based data processing procedures, such as statistical mediation analysis [ 60 ].

Problems with experiment-selected designs.

Although research using experimenter-selected music designs have claimed to manage several methodological problems identified in self-selected music designs to address the current research question, as summarised above, experimenter-selected stimuli based approaches nevertheless have their own limitations (some overlapping with self-selected music approaches).

As mentioned above, experimenter-selected music is less likely to evoke strong emotions compared with self-selected music, and so it is possible that a person who is capable of experiencing intense sadness in response to loved music will not have that experience for music selected by the best-intentioned experimenter. Even with self-selected music, some studies have shown that only about one quarter to one third of participants report experiencing negative emotions such as sadness in response to music they love (see Introduction ). Schubert (6) used the self-selection approach while considerably circumventing the problem of demand characteristics. He asked participants to select a piece of music that they love, but not revealing the research interest in negative emotions. As it turned out, about one third (25/73) of the participants spontaneously reported experiencing negative emotions, with specific mention made of sadness in 12/72 (i.e., one sixth of) cases (p. 17). In that study it was not clear, however, whether the sadness emanated from the music itself, or through some confounding extramusical association . Nevertheless the method mitigated demand characteristics bias, and above all, it ensured that the piece selected was highly liked, something which experimenter-selected approaches rarely guarantee. Konečni [ 61 ] also argued that fully-fledged aesthetic experiences in response to music are rare even under regular listening circumstances. Therefore, the phenomenon of interest would occur in an even smaller proportion of cases in studies applying experimenter-selected music, even if the stimuli have been previously screened for sadness evocation and enjoyment by individuals other than the participant them/her/himself.

Another related limitation of studies using experimenter-selected pieces concerns the response format itself, which commonly employs an integer-based rating scale for each of the affective variables of interest. The problem is not the use of rating scales per se , but the tradition of publishing rating scale results. Studies typically report scale (i.e., item) mean (X) and standard deviation (SD) scores, and/or the correlation coefficient (usually the Pearson product moment coefficient, r) for pairs of variables. The chief problem with such reporting is they imply assumptions about the distribution of the responses. Providing these descriptive statistics, and in particular when the data are then applied to parametric statistical analysis procedures, infers that the distribution of the data are normal, have homogenous variance and are linear [ 62 , p. 311]. If these assumptions are taken at face value, it means that the density of responses diminish as data points are located further away from the mean, with the diminution per scale step being more rapid when the standard deviation is small. Consequently, when there is no explicit information provided about the nature of the distribution, the number of responses that meet the criterion for the phenomenon of interest could be relatively small, and risk not providing statistically sufficient power for meaningful analysis. A simple visual diagnosis can be made through scatterplots of felt sadness versus liking ratings. The decision needs to be made as to where the cut off mark is for sadness and liking scores above which count as satisfying the phenomenon of interest .

This weakness in extant research constitutes the most serious problem of the mediation-based explanation, which, to the author’s knowledge, has exclusively employed experimenter-selected stimuli and use of interval rating scales with X/SD/r reporting, assuming that any amount of sadness evoked by a piece of music should be proportionally implicated in its enjoyment. The assumption is incorrect because it asserts that a linear relationship is evidence of the phenomenon of interest . In fact, the phenomenon of interest is not concerned with enjoyed that accompanies low levels of sadness because when sadness levels are low, other reasons for enjoying the music are still perfectly viable. Evidence of this problem is reflected to some extent by the generally low correlations reported between sadness and liking scores, usually with a small effect size [r < .3, see 63 ]. When the correlation coefficient is small, no conclusion can be drawn about the phenomenon of interest because low correlation only reveals a lack of (non-zero) linearity, rather than information about the modality of the bivariate distribution. That is, a small correlation coefficient provides no information regarding the location of the mode of the distribution, or whether a desirable mode (also) exists in the high sadness, high liking region of the distribution.

In short, by not diagnosing the nature of the bivariate response distribution, the analytic approaches adopted for currently available experimenter-selected designs potentially exclude cases of high evoked sadness that accompany high liking, meaning that they have not captured the phenomenon of interest and so cannot make conclusions about it, or should do so with caution. One solution for future research employing ratings for all variables of interest while maintaining the advantages of the experimenter-selected stimuli approach is to recruit a sufficiently large random sample so that enough cases happen to fall in the desired range spontaneously. However, using self-selected music is more efficient because the phenomenon of interest is achieved by categorical self-selection.

Using self-selected stimuli–justification.

With the above arguments, the stimulus self-selection approach can be justified provided some modifications are made to the way the approach has been applied in the past. These are itemised here in six points. Based on the above overview, the main innovations to note are points 2, 3c, 3d and 4. Square bracketed text following each point indicates the main methodological issue(s) discussed above that are addressed by each of the proposed actions.

Correspondence used for recruiting participants is not to indicate that the study is concerned with experiencing sadness in music, its enjoyment, or both [as per recommendations by 58 , 59 ]. [Demand characteristics]
During the study, request that the participant selects music that is loved, not just liked, to ensure that the desired (high) liking category of music is attained [ 64 ]. [Phenomenon of interest]
that the music is highly liked,
the sadness is indeed felt,
the sadness emanates directly from the music, and not through extramusical association, and
the experienced sadness is implicated in the enjoyment of the music. [Confounding extramusical association; Phenomenon of interest]
A control condition is employed, for example where instead of requesting sadness-evoking music, music evoking another emotion that is not paradoxical is requested, such as a mediator proposed in previous research. An obvious choice is moving music (that is loved). [Demand characteristics; Phenomenon of interest]
A number of affect terms, including sadness and the control condition emotion should be added to a list of emotions rated in both test and control conditions to allow for comparison, and help identify prospective mediators. [Prospective mediators]
Since participants are explicitly asked to have potentially powerfully sad emotions evoked, towards the end of the study an additional stimulus is rated that requires evocation of a positive emotion. This satisfies potential ethical concerns where sadness experience could influence mood negatively, and allows the option of further comparisons with affects in the test condition that were prospective mediators. [Prospective mediators]

Participants

103 participants, recruited from an English speaking tertiary institution, consisting mostly of undergraduate music students, completed the study. They were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions. Fifty participants were randomly assigned to the Sadness condition and 53 to the Moving condition in a between-subjects design. The research received ethics approval from the UNSW Australia institutional review board Human Research Advisory Panel B: Arts, Architecture, Design and Law. Participants were recruited from June 4, 2021 until June 9, 2021. Consent to participate was provided at the opening of the online survey, with a checkbox selected if the participant agreed to participate. No minors participated in the study.

The Qualtrics survey platform ( https://www.qualtrics.com ) was used for human data collection. Self-selected music was identified through online links searched for and reported within the survey by the participant. The participant used an electronic device, such as a laptop, iPad or tablet. They were encouraged to wear earphones to listen to music, but this was not enforced. Affect terms consisted of a list of terms that are drawn from Schindler, Hosoya [ 65 ] and Schubert [ 66 ], as presented in the Procedures.

Prior to commencing the study, informed consent was requested verbally through the online interface, with all participants being asked to read an online participant information sheet, which included information about being free to withdraw from the study at any time. They were informed that their data would be treated confidentially, and were encouraged to ask questions if needed, and then to indicate if they wished to commence the study. Participants were randomly assigned into a Sadness (test) or Moving (control) condition. We describe the sadness condition here, but the moving condition is identical, except that ‘sad’ and ‘sadness’ is replaced with ‘moved’/’being moved’ and ‘movingness’ (respectively). Otherwise, where grammatically straight-forward ‘[CONDITION]’ is shown, which was replaced by ‘sadness’ or ‘moved’/’being moved’, depending on the assigned condition. After the tasks for the test or control condition were completed, all participants were invited to select another piece, but this time one that made them feel happy. Although this step of the study was completed by all participants, it will be referred to as the Happy ‘condition’ for convenience. The steps of the study are listed below. They followed one another in sequence, and the participant could not return to a step once they had answered the questions in that step and progressed.

Participants were asked to self-select a piece that they both loved and that evoked sadness. They were encouraged to think about this for a few minutes if necessary. For those who could not come up with a piece that met these criteria, some alternative pieces were proposed, from which they could select, or, have further opportunity to select another piece. Details of the piece were collected.
Enjoyment of the piece was rated: "How much do you like this piece?” (anchors: 0 = dislike it a lot; 100 = like it a lot)
Open-ended felt emotions requested: “Please indicate in as much detail as possible any emotions that you feel in response to this piece. Be sure to include [CONDITION], of course.” (Free text response.)
Affects felt . 26 felt affect terms were rated on a 3-point scale (A lot, A little, Not felt) on the extent to which each terms was felt. The wording of each terms was presented to the participant as—1: Being absorbed/completely immersed in the music; 2. Anger; 3. A sense of awe; 4. Feeling of beauty; 5. Calm; 6. Chills; 7. Compassion; 8. Empathy; 9. Euphoria; 10. Fear; 11. A feeling that is sublime; 12. Goosebumps; 13. Grief; 14. Happiness; 15. Joy; 16. Being moved; 17. Nostalgia; 18. Peacefulness; 19. Powerful feelings; 20. Release or relief (sometimes referred to as ’Catharsis’); 21. Sadness; 22. Tears/wanting to cry/feeling like crying/actually crying; 23. Tenderness; 24. Transcendence; 25. Tragedy; 26. Wonder.
Confirm felt and direct . Confirm that: Affect terms marked as present in the previous step (‘A lot’ or ‘A little’) were (a) felt and (b) that they were triggered directly by the music, not by thoughts, memories, images, etc. (Yes/No for each of (a) and (b)).
I would like the piece a LITTLE LESS;
It would make NO DIFFERENCE;
I would like the piece a LITTLE MORE;
I would like the piece a LOT MORE.
Affects that add to liking . The same 26 Affect terms listed in step iv were rated on a 3-point scale (Adds to the pleasure, Does not add to the pleasure, Don’t know/not relevant) to assess whether the “the felt emotions add to the liking, pleasure, attraction or enjoyment”.
Cooling down. The above procedure was repeated for a self-selected happy piece, but without any ratings of the 26 Affect terms requested (i.e. steps iv, v & vii excluded).
Background (age, gender, music background) data were collected after which the participant was thanked and farewelled.

Some researchers, such as [ 67 , 68 ], treat the concepts of affect and emotion as distinct. In the present study the distinction is partly made for the convenience of distinguishing between participant open-ended response in step iii (emotion) versus their selection from a predetermined list of terms in steps iv, v & vii (affect). The term ‘emotion’ rather than ‘affect’ was used in all of these instruction steps because the former term was considered better understood by participants, regardless of whether referred to as emotion or affect in this article.

Data validation

Participant profile by condition..

Inferential tests demonstrated that the Sadness and Moving groups were statistically identical in terms of gender, age and years of music lessons ( Table 1 ). Also comparable across the groups was the overall rating of liking, averaging over 90 on a 0–100 scale, with upper quartiles (Q3) demonstrating a ceiling effect in both conditions which supports the use of self-selected music for generating high levels of pleasure.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299115.t001

Check that the emotion was felt and evoked emotion was directly due to the music.

There was overall high confirmation that the emotions were felt (over 96% of participants) and over 90% of participants in both conditions confirmed that the sadness was triggered intrinsically by the music (not triggered by something outside the music). See Table 1 for breakdown by condition. Overall, participants from both conditions were successful at experiencing the target emotion (Sadness or Being moved) and confirmed that, as requested, the music was directly responsible for triggering the emotion, rather than due to some extramusical factor. All participants were retained for further analysis.

Most frequently reported music excerpts.

All participants selected a piece that met the music selection criteria. Although researcher-suggested pieces were prepared in case a participant could not identify a self-selected piece meeting the criteria, none of the participants requested the researcher-suggested option, and so the research-suggested options were never used in the study. A selection of the self-selected items is presented in Table 2 , showing composers/artists reported by at least three participants across the cohort, and listing the works reported at least twice across the cohort. Interesting similarities can be observed across conditions, with composers Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy, and artists Taylor Swift and Bon Iver appearing in the Moving and Sad conditions. Furthermore, for the Beethoven, two pieces were mentioned in both of these conditions: Für Elise and Moonlight Sonata (1st Movement). These selections reflect the shared tastes across the groups, and at the high proportion of musicians, in particular pianists, who participated (all of the more frequently selected Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy pieces were for piano). Table 1 reveals the overall high average years of music lessons reported across the cohort [ 69 ]. These selections also indicate the capacity for the same piece of music to evoke different emotions (being moving and sadness).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299115.t002

Emotion profile of sad music: Open-ended

After selection of a piece in their assigned condition, participants were asked to provide free descriptions of the emotions they felt in response to the selected piece (self-selected sad or self-selected moving music). The reported terms were pre-processed by identifying all reported emotion terms (participants could report more than one), correcting spelling mistakes, checking context and lemmatizing terms. This was followed by a frequency count of these terms for each condition. The target emotion was expected to be reported frequently in each condition.

Table 3 lists the emotion terms in descending order of frequency for each condition (including the Happy condition, where the same task was requested of participants in both conditions, but for a happy piece), with the most frequent words shown (down to a count of five). The selection of most frequent terms shown with an asterisk in the top rows of the table (above the horizontal cell divider) was determined by the ‘Power Fitted Elbow’ (PFE) technique that builds on word frequency distribution characteristics [ 70 – 73 ]. The expected target emotion (shown in italics font in the table) is reported most frequently in all conditions. Noteworthy is that sad was reported frequently in the Moved condition, while negative emotions were reported exclusively among the most frequently reported Sad condition emotions. Nostalgia was frequently reported in all conditions. In the Sad condition, the lemma Moved (not shown in the table) was mentioned 4 times, but was not reported frequently, according to the PFE criterion. Another interesting finding is that none of the frequently investigated mediator emotions (Being moved, in particular), appear in the most frequently reported items of the Sad condition list (sad, nostalgia, loss, melancholy and lonely). In contrast, the Moved condition did lead to frequent open-ended reporting of sadness.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299115.t003

Emotion profile of sad music: Felt Affect term ratings

After open-ended responses were reported, participants were asked to indicate the extent to which each of 26 affect terms were felt when listening to the music. Again, the target affect terms were expected to be rated highest. The ratings for each affect term within and between conditions were examined.

Means for each affect term by condition are summarised in Fig 1 . Ratings of the same affect term between conditions were analysed using Bonferroni adjusted independent samples t-tests. Felt sadness was rated higher in the Sad condition, but (non-significantly) higher ratings were given to felt Power, Moved and Absorption ratings in the Sad condition. For the Moved condition the affect term Being moved was rated as the second highest scale (second to Absorption), and the rating was statistically the same as for the rating of Being Moved in the Sad condition. Other differences within and across the two conditions can be observed in Fig 1 . Differences for within conditions are not shown because of the large number that were significantly different at p = .05. The highest scoring (with mean rating in at least one condition > 1.5) affect terms were Absorption, Awe, Beauty, Moved, Power, and Sadness.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299115.g001

In these data, a relatively high rating of Being moved can be observed in the Sad condition, and it received a higher rating than the target emotion (Sadness) by M = .122, though non-significantly (p = 1.0), which could be taken to support the action of a mediator, being moved, as responsible for the pleasure generated by the music, despite the accompanying rating of sadness.

Affects that add to enjoyment

The above results indicate the presence of emotion during the enjoyable music experience. However this does not necessarily confirm that the emotion itself is implicated in the enjoyment of the music. The next step of the study addressed this with an explicit question about the contribution of each affect term to the enjoyment of the music. The 26 Affect terms were presented again this time to be classified as contributing, not contributing, or being irrelevant to the enjoyment of the music. Table 4 lists the counts across each of the three possibilities for each Affect term, by Condition. Chi-Square tests identified whether the Affect words add to enjoyment of the music by chance or not.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299115.t004

Significant Chi-square test statistics (at p = .05 with Bonferroni correction) ranged from 15.500 (Fear) to 83.400 (Absorption) for the Moving condition and 14.596 (Fear) to 82.383 (Being moved) for the Sad condition (at p = .05). Chi-Squared tests for Sad and Moving conditions pooled produced statistically significant results for all emotions at p = .05 with Bonferroni correction, ranging from χ 2 = 13.273 (Tragedy) to 158.606 (Being Moved), with second highest χ 2 = 156.85 (for Absorption) and third highest χ 2 = 84.061 (for Sadness).

Self-selected sad music was associated with good likelihood of reporting felt sadness as adding to the pleasure of the experience (83% of response in the Sad condition versus 71% in the Moving condition). The same applies for the affect term rating of Being moved in the Moving condition.

All emotions contributed to the enjoyment of the self-selected music, with the exception of Anger, Fear, Tragedy (both conditions for each, though Tragedy was approaching significance), Grief (Moving condition), Euphoria, Sublime, Happiness, Joy, Peacefulness and Wonder (Sad condition for each). Absorption and Being Moved made the most consistently positive contribution to enjoyment of music, with each being reported as contributing to enjoyment by 90% or more of participants regardless of condition ( Table 4 ).

Fewer nominally negative emotions add to enjoyment in the Moving condition, whereas fewer positive emotions add to enjoyment in the Sad condition. Sadness and crying are emotions with nominally negative connotations, but were reported as adding to the pleasure, regardless of the condition.

Additional emotions that add to liking

The 26 Affect terms might not have exhaustively covered all the emotions that could be experienced, or enjoyed. Therefore, a final question invited participants to list any other emotions that added to the enjoyment of the music.

Only one expression was reported by different participants more than once—Hopelessness (3 independent mentions, one in the Moving condition). 72 participants indicated that no additional emotions contributed to enjoyment (36 in the Moving condition and 36 in the Sad condition). A higher proportion of participants who did report additional emotions mentioned ones that could be interpreted as negative in the Sad condition compared to the Moving condition, but because of the heterogeneity of the responses, which included some words that were already among the 26 Affect terms, no strong conclusion can be drawn, except that the set of Affect terms was effective in identifying the feelings implicated in pleasurable musical experiences.

Hypothesis test–Sadness is liked because the music is sad

For the responses to the Sadness removed step, the following scoring was applied to responses: -2 for ‘I would like the piece a LOT LESS’, -1 for ‘I would like the piece a LITTLE LESS’, 1 for ‘I would like the piece a LITTLE MORE’, 2 for ‘I would like the piece a LOT MORE’, and 0 for NO DIFFERENCE. If the Direct effect hypothesis is supported, we would expect liking to reduce when sadness is removed from the experience. The Indirect effect hypothesis, on the other hand, predicts that removal of sadness would not change liking (change of 0) or increase liking. A single sample t-test supported the Direct effect hypothesis, with an overall reduction of .83 (SD = .916) in liking on the scale of -2 to +2 (t(46) = -.6.207, p < .001, Cohen’s-d = .916). For comparison, in the control condition, removal of movingness also led to a reduction in liking (M = -.77, SD = .807, t(51) = -.6872, p < .001, Cohen’s-d = .807). Taken together the data from this step of the study supports the Direct effect hypothesis.

Based on an overall interpretation of the data, the Direct effect hypothesis is supported. In the specific part of the study that tested the hypothesis, the Sadness removed step, participants reported overall significant reduction in pleasure if the felt sadness, and only the felt sadness evoked by the music, were excised. If sadness were not in itself enjoyed, we may have expected participants to attribute non-sad emotions to the enjoyment, or be unable to perform the task. As it turned out, we can confirm that 83% of participants could perform the task and verify that the sadness was specifically enjoyed, suggesting that the phenomenon of interest is empirically demonstrable. To further ascertain if this is a plausible interpretation, the results are interpreted through the alternative, Indirect effect hypothesis, lens by examining whether mediators still play a commensurate or dominant role in the effect.

Mediation explanation

In the results where affect terms were all rated, a term can be viewed as a mediator if its score or count is statistically equal to or higher than the score or count of the target emotion. Based on this criterion, several steps of the study could be interpreted as supporting the presence of a mediator. In the Open-ended felt emotions step Nostalgia, a prospective mediator of sadness-enjoyment, was spontaneously reported ( Table 3 ). However, Being moved was not, despite previous evidence that Being moved is the stronger candidate of the two [ 15 ]. Nostalgia appeared frequently in the Moved condition as well, but in the Moved condition no mediator was expected because the target emotion (being moved) itself already contained an implicitly positive component. Furthermore, Sadness was also frequently reported in the Moved condition, but, again, there is no reason that being moved would require a mediator. The Indirect effect hypothesis does not predict a mediator that is itself negatively valenced. Thus a mediator based explanation for these results is not straight forward.

In the Affects felt step a more credible impact of prospective mediators can be observed. In the Sad condition, Absorbed (rated highest, with M = 1.796), Being moved (rated higher than Sadness by M = .122, though non-significantly [NS], p = 1.0) and Powerful feelings (rated higher than Sadness by M = 0.020, NS p = 1.0) are all rated as high or higher than the target emotion (Sadness). In the Moved condition only Absorbed (M = 1.942) is rated higher than Being moved (by M = .135, NS p = .074). If we set aside the finding for the Moved condition, the mediator-based explanation is supported, triangulating extant evidence that two of these affects (absorbed and moved) are mediators of sadness.

So it is possible to find support for the Indirect-effect hypothesis, and the mediator-based explanation in particular. However, the findings refer to the presence of emotions. There is no assurance that any of the emotions identified are adding to the pleasure, with the exception of the target emotion, since that requirement was made explicit in the procedure.

The Affects that add to liking step addressed the matter. Being moved, Absorption, and Powerful feelings (but not Nostalgia) all had the same or higher counts than the target (Sadness) emotion, indicating that they add to enjoyment in the Sad condition ( Table 4 ). For example, the affect term Being moved was voted as ’adding to pleasure’ by 96% of participants in the Sad condition, compared to the affect term Sadness ’adding to pleasure’ according to 83% of participants. This supports the Indirect effect hypothesis ( Table 4 ).

Here we have the strongest evidence of mediators in explaining enjoyment of sadness, and this aligns with evidence from previous research [as discussed in the introduction, see 17 ]. But Absorption (adds to pleasure according to 92% of participants) also has a higher count than the target emotion (90%) in the Moved condition. Does that mean that Absorption also mediates Being moved? As pointed out above, that seems unlikely because Being moved already contains a positive aspect, and so should not need a mediator. Using the mediator-based explanation, Absorption adding to enjoyment votes should have (at least) been fewer than the votes for Being moved in the Moving condition (which was not the case). Furthermore, in the Sadness condition, the target emotion itself received statistically significant votes as adding to pleasure, meaning that the alleged mediators may not have served any essential purpose in contributing to the enjoyment. The mediation explanation is only able to partially explain the results. An alternative explanation is proposed by applying the concept of ‘semantic overlap’.

Semantic overlap explanation

Semantic overlap is a phenomenon concerned with the mental organisation of concepts and word meanings. Words with similar meanings (synonyms) are more linked with one another in a mental space than words with unrelated meanings. This is often characterised in network inspired models of the mind, foundationally proposed by Quillian and the notion of the semantic network [ 74 , 75 ]. Word meanings are organised in a complex yet systematic manner according to network principles, of particular interest here being through similarities in the meaning of words, where expressions that are more similar in meaning appear ‘closer together’ in the mental network. This means that when a word is triggered (e.g., heard or read), the semantically more closely related words are more primed (ready to be raised to conscious attention) in the mental network than less closely related words. Cognitive linguists by and large agree that words are pointers or approximate representations of concepts and experiences stored in memory [ 76 , 77 ]. The implication is that words can be mapped onto points in multidimensional semantic space, with distance between words reflecting (of interest here) degree of conceptual dissimilarity between the words. Considerable effort has been devoted to organising emotions by similarity [e.g., 78 – 83 ]. Semantic distance may therefore explain why Being moved frequently appears for sad evoking music (a frequently reported result), and the novel findings identified in the present study.

It is possible to estimate the relative semantic distance between the two words moving and sadness by looking up the terms in a published list of words with quantified point estimates of locations in theoretical semantic space. A large such database was developed by Mohammad [ 82 ], where estimates of location in semantic space of some 20,000 English words were produced. The semantic space in that research adopts a conventional representation of the space, particularly relevant for emotions, referred to as ‘VAD’ space. Emotions can be reasonably well expressed in terms of two dimensions, labelled valence (V) and arousal (A), where the former refers to the positive or negative aspect of the word’s meaning (e.g., happy and calm exhibit positive valence, while sad and angry negative) and the degree of activity associated with the word’s meaning (e.g., joyous and furious are high arousal, while calm and sad are low arousal). Some have argued that two dimensions are only partially sufficient for describing the meaning of an emotion [ 81 , 84 – 87 ], and a frequently proposed third dimension is dominance (D) (where words such as angry and energetic exhibit high dominance, while fear and innocuous are low in dominance), leading to the VAD (Valence, Arousal, Dominance) abbreviation for this three dimensional configuration [other examples: 85 , 88 , for a review, see 89 , 90 ]. Mohammad (82) provided numerical VAD scores for each term scaled to a score between 0 and 1 (negative to positive for valence, low to high for arousal and for dominance) based on human ratings. From these data it is possible to estimate the semantic distance between emotions.

Through calculations using the VAD word list published by Mohammad (82), Moved and Sadness have a semantic distance in VAD space of 0.607 units (numbers closer to 0 indicating greater similarity). With Sadness as the reference, positive emotions appearing in the Affect term list have distances that range from 0.852 for Calm to 1.243 for Joy (all greater than the distance between Sadness and Moving), while negative emotions have scores ranging from 0.469 for Grief (closest negative emotion to Sadness from the Affect terms presented) to 0.768 (Anger), which apart from Anger are all closer to Sadness than Moving is to Sadness. That is, Moving has more semantic overlap with Sadness than does Anger and the positive emotions Joy and Happiness, suggesting semantic overlap as a viable alternative to mediation as to why being moved appears in tandem with sadness. The VAD data also suggest that Moving is semantically more closely related to Sadness than Catharsis, since Catharsis has a distance of 0.633 from Sadness (slightly more distant than Moving). High ratings of Moving for a Sad-evoking context can therefore be explained by semantic overlap. Such an interpretation strengthens the case for supporting the Direct effect hypothesis, because being moved need not be treated as surrogate for sadness.

The Direct effect hypothesis proposes that pleasure is experienced by contextualised re-appraisal or ‘dissociation’ of the Action tendency component of an otherwise negative emotion. The consequent positive experience (enjoyment, pleasure, preference) provides another clue for the remaining Affect terms that were rated the same or higher than the target emotion in each condition. The mediation account fails to explain why Sadness was voted (by 71% of participant) as adding to enjoyment in the Moving condition. The mediator based explanation is also poor at explaining why Absorption was reported as adding to enjoyment, and for doing so in both conditions.

The semantic overlap approach can better explain these results, too. Affect terms such as Absorption and Powerful feelings are affects related to enjoyment when experiencing art. Consider the Absorption in Music scale developed by Sandstrom and Russo [ 91 ]. The 34 item scale contains several items related to the pleasure of being engaged with music in different ways [see also 2 , 18 , 92 , 93 ]. Powerful experiences are reported during special, personal experiences that occur during strong positive aesthetic experiences [ 94 – 96 , p. xiv]. That is, the task itself, of identifying a loved piece of music, also produces semantic overlap of these terms. Furthermore, in the Sad condition several positive emotions were reported more frequently as having no relevance to enjoyment, in comparison to the Moved condition: Euphoria (57% in the Sad condition versus 15% in the Moving condition), Happiness (43% vs 8%) and Joy (49% vs 12%). Mediation struggles to explain why purely positive affect terms are not voted as adding to enjoyment. Semantic overlap, on the other hand, suggests that the activation of sadness is more likely to be associated with other negative emotions, while being moved would be more associated with emotions of both positive and negative valence. In addition to the possibly misleading interpretations of enjoyed-sadness in music research employing a mediator-based approach to explaining the phenomenon, discussed in the Method section, semantic overlap offers an explanation of the results that is superior to the mediator-based explanation.

Conclusions

This study investigated whether the experience of sadness, evoked by music, can itself be highly enjoyable. A novel method was applied where participants were asked to imagine how enjoyment would be impacted should the felt sadness somehow be removed. The results demonstrated that sadness is directly implicated in the enjoyment of such music, providing support for the ‘Direct effect hypothesis’. This hypothesis states that when sad music is enjoyed, the sadness itself directly contributes to the enjoyment. A theoretical position has been presumed by the hypothesis–that the experience of sadness contains a component that can be dissociated from regular experience of the negative emotion when contemplating music or any aesthetic event. The presence of emotions such as being moved were explained by the concept of semantic overlap, where an emotion concept is not activated as a lexical singular, but rather as the meaning that the emotion encompasses, or that is spread to other related emotions, according to how similar they are (in this case to the concept of sadness). Being moved is sufficiently close in meaning to sadness to allow it to be activated during a sadness evoking music experience, regardless of the extent to which it is enjoyed, meaning that the presence of an emotion such as being moved does not necessarily explain (and is not needed to explain) why felt sadness can be enjoyed. Absorption is another affect that accompanied loved, sadness-inducing music. This, too, was explained by semantic overlap, with the positive component of the sadness activating other, reasonably nearby, positive affects, including Absorption. The state of absorption may also play a causal role in attraction to music [ 20 , 97 ], and so there could well be some feedback loop between absorption and other aspects of the experience, including evoked emotions. Suggestions were made for further research to test whether the semantic overlap account and the Direct effect hypothesis better characterise enjoyment of negative emotion in music than mediators (such as being moved and absorption) that themselves have a positive component, through which enjoyment is indirectly generated.

The results of the present study were enhanced by applying a modified version of research using self-selected stimuli that minimised demand characteristics, while ensuring that the phenomenon of interest was investigated. Methodologically, the study took the critical step of ensuring that the impact of particular affects on enjoyment of the music were investigated, not just their presence. Future research is likely to continue the more popular method of using experimenter-selected stimuli which are then rated along various affect terms. This paper made recommendations on how such research could be more successful at identifying the phenomenon of interest, and in so doing better address the debate on the enjoyment of felt sadness and other felt negative emotions in music.

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Plural of Hypothesis: Rules and Examples
The plural form of hypothesis is 'hypotheses'. You can use 'hypotheses' in a sentence by replacing the singular 'hypothesis' with the plural form. For example, \"The scientist tested multiple hypotheses to explain the results.\". 'Hypothesis' is the singular form of the word, while 'hypotheses' is the plural form.
How To Use "Hypothesis" In A Sentence: Breaking Down Usage
Article Usage: In most cases, "hypothesis" is preceded by the indefinite article "a" or "an.". For example, you could say, "She proposed a hypothesis to explain the observed phenomenon.". Singular or Plural: "Hypothesis" can be used in both singular and plural forms. When referring to a single proposed explanation, use the ...
The Plural of Hypothesis
The plural of "hypothesis" is "hypotheses." Scientists base scientific hypotheses on previous observations that cannot be explained with the available scientific theories. Experimenters may test and reject several hypotheses before solving a problem. The noun "hypothesis" has a Greek root, which is the derivation of the plural "hypotheses."
Hypothesis Definition & Meaning
hypothesis: [noun] an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument. an interpretation of a practical situation or condition taken as the ground for action.
Whats the Plural of Hypothesis: Understanding Grammatical Number
Here are key points to remember about the term "hypothesis": It is the singular form used when referring to one proposed explanation. A hypothesis can later become a theory if it is supported by substantial evidence. In the realm of science, it is a statement subject to verification or falsification through research.
What's the plural of hypothesis?
The plural form of "hypothesis" is "hypotheses." This is because "hypothesis" is a Greek-derived word that follows the rules for forming plurals of Greek-derived words. In general, Greek-derived words that end in "-is" form the plural by changing the ending to "-es." The plural of "hypothesis" is "hypotheses" because it is a borrowed word from ...
HYPOTHESIS
HYPOTHESIS meaning: 1. an idea or explanation for something that is based on known facts but has not yet been proved…. Learn more.
What's the Plural of Hypothesis?
Lots of people confuse the plural of hypothesis, and it's not tough to see why: hypothesis is an irregular plural noun form that omits the -s/-es of regular plural nouns. Apart from this, the way hypothesis modifies from singular to plural effectively changes the spelling and pronunciation of the word by substituting the -sis as a singular to ...
What is the Plural of Hypothesis?
The plural form (meaning multiples) of the base word "hypothesis" is "hypotheses." Nouns can identify places, people, animals, and other things. They are the basic materials required to construct sentences. There are different types of nouns, including proper nouns, common nouns, compound nouns, collective nouns, abstract nouns, and countable ...
Plural of Hypothesis: The Correct Form for American English
The Singular and Plural of Hypothesis. Singular: Hypothesis; Plural: Hypotheses; The plural form of "hypothesis" is "hypotheses." This transformation follows a common pattern in English where nouns of Greek origin ending in "-is" change to "-es" in the plural.
hypothesis noun
The hypothesis predicts that children will perform better on task A than on task B. The results confirmed his hypothesis on the use of modal verbs. These observations appear to support our working hypothesis. a speculative hypothesis concerning the nature of matter; an interesting hypothesis about the development of language
hypothesis noun
1 [countable] an idea or explanation of something that is based on a few known facts but that has not yet been proved to be true or correct synonym theory to formulate/confirm a hypothesis a hypothesis about the function of dreams There is little evidence to support these hypotheses. Topic Collocations Scientific Research theory. formulate/advance a theory/hypothesis
Hypotheses vs Hypothesis: Deciding Between Similar Terms
In this context, the singular form "hypothesis" is most commonly used. For example: Hypothesis: Increasing the amount of fertilizer will result in larger tomato plants. Once the experiment is designed, however, the researcher may need to develop multiple hypotheses to test different aspects of the phenomenon being studied. In this context ...
What is the Plural of Hypothesis?
The plural form of the hypothesis is hypotheses. This is the only way in the English language to make hypothesis plural. Because of the Greek origin, the rule of making a noun that ends in "is" to change it to "es.".
HYPOTHESIS
HYPOTHESIS definition: a suggested explanation for something that has not yet been proved to be true. Learn more.
HYPOTHESIS
HYPOTHESIS definition: 1. an idea or explanation for something that is based on known facts but has not yet been proved…. Learn more.
A Comprehensive Analysis of The Plural Forms of Hypothesis
See, "hypothesis" comes from Greek, and in Greek, there's this whole other way of making plurals for words ending in "-sis." It involves adding "-ses" instead of "-es." Some folks, especially those with a deep love for the classics, prefer to stick to this Greek-y plural form.
Hypothesis Plural, What is the plural of Hypothesis?
The singular possessive form of "Hypothesis" is "Hypothesis's". Examples of Singular Possessive Form of Hypothesis: The scientist presented the Hypothesis's findings to the committee. The researcher conducted experiments to test the Hypothesis's validity. The professor analyzed the Hypothesis's implications for the field.
Plural of hypothesis?
What is the verb form of 'hypothesis'? Hypothesize. The plural of hypothesis is hypotheses. Hypotheses. A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. Hypotheses is ...
How to Write a Strong Hypothesis
5. Phrase your hypothesis in three ways. To identify the variables, you can write a simple prediction in if…then form. The first part of the sentence states the independent variable and the second part states the dependent variable. If a first-year student starts attending more lectures, then their exam scores will improve.
What is the plural of hypothesis?
The plural form of hypothesis is hypotheses . Find more words! Accordingly, to deprive us of knowledge, sceptical hypotheses need only to be bare logical possibilities. The study focuses on math and language arts, and the results strongly support these hypotheses.
What is the singular form of hypothesis?
The word is spelled hypothesis as the singular form. The scientist argued that his hypothesis was the only correct one. The plural of hypothesis is hypotheses. Other scientists argued that there ...
Whats the Plural of Thesis: Understanding Singular and Plural Forms
By Khamis 23 January 2024. The plural of "thesis" adheres to the Greek-rooted pattern, changing the singular -is to a plural -es. Accurate use of "thesis" and "theses" reflects scholarly precision in both written and oral communication. Awareness of correct pluralization extends to other similar nouns ending in -sis, emphasizing the ...
This Machine Learning Paper Introduce PISSA: Principal Singular Values
It utilizes Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) to factorize the matrix, initializing the principal singular values and vectors to train the two matrices while keeping the residual matrix frozen during fine-tuning. PiSSA shares the same architecture with LoRA, utilizing the hypothesis that changes in model parameters form a low-rank matrix.
Liking music with and without sadness: Testing the direct effect
Limitations of the Indirect effect hypothesis. An inherent weakness of Indirect effect hypothesis, and in particular the mediator-based explanation, is that it does not consider the phenomenal experience of the individual who claims that they both experience sadness, and that the sadness itself, for them, forms at least part of the pleasure [e.g., 6].

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