Vetenskaps Nyheter interviews Karl Halvor Teigen of the University of Oslo, soon after his return home to Norway after receiving the 2011 Ig Nobel Prize in psychology at the ceremony at Harvard. Teigen was honored for trying to understand why, in everyday life, people sigh. Here’s their report:
His research is detailed in the study “Is a Sigh ‘Just a Sigh’? Sighs as Emotional Signals and Responses to a Difficult Task,” Karl Halvor Teigen, Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, vol. 49, no. 1, 2008, pp. 49–57.
BONUS: Several versions of the song that made famous the phrase “a sigh is just a sigh”: