Sentimentality
Exaggerated, indulgent tenderness towards the past.
Sentimentality is exaggerated, indulgent tenderness towards the past. The chest swells and the eyes may water. The response exceeds what the circumstances actually warrant. The warm feeling flatters its object beyond what it truly deserves.
Sentimentality at its best honours the tender past
Sentimentality is the indulgent tenderness towards memory. It can be beautiful, or it can be a substitute for being present now. Some people live almost entirely in the past, replaying sentimental memories because the present cannot compete. This is a cage. Use sentimentality as occasional visitation, not as a home. Visit the old photos once a month, not every night. Sing the old songs sometimes, but also learn new ones. The past was precious. The present is also precious, if you can be here for it. Sentimentality that takes you away from now is a thief. Sentimentality that occasionally reminds you what you love is a friend.
"Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us."
— Oscar Wilde
Sentimentality has a distinctive body signature of indulgent warm response. The chest swells with particular tender weight. The breath becomes deeper. The eyes may water, sometimes with particular ease that suggests the response exceeds what triggered it. The face shows particular soft sustained attention to the sentimental content. The voice often carries particular soft quality when speaking about sentimental material. The body holds itself in a way that suggests being absorbed in pleasant emotional engagement. The state can be sustained for periods, often supported by particular media or memories that produce continued response.
Sentimentality has been studied less directly as a discrete emotion but appears in research on what is sometimes called sentimental engagement and in critical writing about media and culture. Various critics and philosophers have engaged with sentimentality, often critically, including Oscar Wilde's observation that a sentimentalist is one who wants luxury of an emotion without paying for it. In contemporary research, sentimentality appears within work on nostalgia, emotional content in media, and what some researchers call kitsch (referring to media designed to produce sentimental response through cheap means).
Sentimentality arises through specific conditions involving the gap between feeling and reality. Common patterns include:
Sentimentality benefits from being distinguished from genuine warm engagement. The following help.
Notice when feeling exceeds what circumstances warrant
Sentimentality often operates without explicit recognition of the gap between feeling and actual circumstances. Noticing when your warm response exceeds what the actual content or memory warrants supports better engagement. The noticing does not require eliminating the feeling but supports recognising what is operating.
Engage genuinely with actual people and situations
Sentimentality often substitutes for actual engagement with the people and situations being sentimentalised. Engaging genuinely with actual relationships and circumstances, rather than just feeling sentimental about them, supports better functioning. The actual engagement may be less pleasant than sentimentality but typically produces more meaningful outcomes.
Distinguish from genuine warm feeling
Genuine warm feeling about the past, about people, about meaningful content is valuable and does not require elimination. Distinguishing this from sentimentality that has separated from accurate engagement supports preserving what is meaningful while reducing what is hollow. The distinction is often workable when honestly examined.
Examine media consumption
Substantial sentimentality is produced by media designed for this purpose. Examining what media you consume, recognising techniques designed to produce sentimental response, and making more conscious choices about engagement often reduces unwanted sentimentality. This does not require avoiding all sentimentality-producing media but does support more conscious engagement.
If sentimentality has become substitute for engagement
When sentimentality has become substitute for genuine engagement with people or situations, addressing the underlying pattern often warrants attention. Therapy can help work with patterns of avoidance that produce sentimentality as substitute for engagement. The capacity for both genuine warm feeling and genuine engagement with actual circumstances can typically be developed when patterns are addressed.
"Wilde observed that a sentimentalist is one who wants the luxury of an emotion without paying for it. The critique distinguishes sentimentality from genuine emotional engagement that includes the costs of the emotions."
— A summary of critical engagement with sentimentality
What is sentimentality?
Sentimentality is exaggerated, indulgent tenderness towards the past. The body has been activated by emotional content from the past with response that exceeds what circumstances warrant, often with particular warm quality that lingers in nostalgic territory. The chest swells. The eyes may water. There is a quality of being moved by the past in ways that may not match its actual character, of indulgence in warm feeling that has separated from accurate engagement, of feeling that flatters its object beyond what it deserves. Sentimentality specifically refers to the exaggerated indulgent quality, often with feeling that exceeds what actual circumstances or content warrant. The exaggerated-indulgent quality is essential.
Where do people feel sentimentality in the body?
Sentimentality has a distinctive signature of indulgent warm response. The chest swells with particular tender weight. The breath becomes deeper. The eyes may water, sometimes with particular ease that suggests the response exceeds what triggered it. The face shows particular soft sustained attention to the sentimental content. The voice often carries particular soft quality when speaking about sentimental material. The body holds itself in a way that suggests being absorbed in pleasant emotional engagement. The state can be sustained for periods, often supported by particular media or memories that produce continued response.
How is sentimentality different from nostalgia?
Nostalgia involves warm feeling about the past with possible idealisation. Sentimentality is more specifically the exaggerated indulgent form. A person can be nostalgic without sentimentality (warm feeling about past without the exaggerated indulgent quality). Sentimentality often involves nostalgia plus the additional indulgent dimension that not all nostalgia includes. Wilde observed that a sentimentalist is one who wants the luxury of an emotion without paying for it; the critique distinguishes sentimentality from genuine emotional engagement that includes the costs of the emotions. Nostalgia can be genuine engagement with the past; sentimentality often involves response that exceeds what the past actually warrants.
Is sentimentality bad?
Not necessarily, though it depends on what it is doing. Genuine warm feeling about the past, about meaningful content, about people you care about is valuable. Sentimentality becomes problematic when it substitutes for genuine engagement with actual people and situations, when it operates through idealised memories that prevent engagement with what actually happened, or when it produces particular kinds of false emotional engagement that disconnect from reality. Critical traditions have engaged with sentimentality through specific critique, particularly when it operates as substitute for engagement that warrants more difficulty. Distinguishing genuine warm engagement from sentimentality that has separated from accurate engagement supports preserving what is meaningful while reducing what is hollow.
How do you avoid being sentimental?
Several practices help. Noticing when feeling exceeds what circumstances warrant supports better engagement; the noticing does not require eliminating the feeling but supports recognising what is operating. Engaging genuinely with actual people and situations, rather than just feeling sentimental about them, supports better functioning; the actual engagement may be less pleasant than sentimentality but typically produces more meaningful outcomes. Distinguishing from genuine warm feeling supports preserving what is valuable while reducing what is hollow. Examining media consumption, recognising techniques designed to produce sentimental response, and making more conscious choices about engagement often reduces unwanted sentimentality. When sentimentality has become substitute for genuine engagement with people or situations, professional support can help work with the underlying pattern; therapy can address patterns of avoidance that produce sentimentality as substitute.
No source-level citations are stored for this entry yet. The dictionary draws on the broader literature in affective neuroscience, psychology and cross-cultural emotion research. See the About page for the project's wider references.
Sentimentality sits in the mixed family because of its dual character as warm feeling that may not match accurate engagement. It overlaps with nostalgia as the broader category of past-oriented warm feeling, with tenderness when grounded affection is involved, with kitsch when media-produced sentimentality is the focus, with what critical traditions have engaged with through specific critique, and with what cultural variation has produced as different relationships with the experience across regions.
See where sentimentality sits among the other 402 emotions.
Open Sentimentality on the wheel