What’s the Science of Public Grief?

The death of Queen Elizabeth II has caused an uproar in the United Kingdom and around the world. Everyone else is grieving for someone they know and love, but what about her family? Feelings of loss for someone you haven't met can be considered grief.

Michael Cholbi is a philosopher and ethicist at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships between a person and a celebrity. Para social relationships can lead to grief. I don't see why we should expect grief within the context of relationships.

Disrupted world

Para social grief can be attributed to a loss of possibility. The experience of grief is disrupting the experience of the world as a whole. Louise Richardson, co-director of a project at the University of York, UK, says that when it happens there is a kind of shattering of your assumptions. A theory called the assumptive world suggests that a person has a strong belief in the world. Feelings of grief about the death of the Queen can be explained by the kind of losses we grieve over.

It makes sense that people will mourn the loss of public figures in whom they had somehow invested their own identities by adopting the same perceived values or by admiring a stance that the person took. Someone has played a part in the values and concerns of the person who has passed away. It feels like a small loss of an aspect of yourself, even if it's just a loss of the person.

According to research from 2012 a process called introjection can help people deal with celebrity deaths. Andy Langford is the clinical director of the London-based bereavement charity. He says that those qualities help when dealing with grief. "For some people, it will be a case of saying, well actually, I've really admired that quality, and so I'll continue to live in that, to stand for it" He said that grief for a public figure is real.

Diminishing grief

For someone far away, such as the Queen, grief will diminish sooner than for someone closer. He says that the bond we form with someone is dependent on three factors. The reason why they are important is because our brains are designed to look for those three aspects.

According to the director of the Center for Prolonged Grief at Columbia University in New York City, it is highly unlikely that those mourning the death of the Queen will be affected by long term grief disorder.

Testing theories around grief is not easy. Richardson asks, "How can you test something when you don't know what it is?" It is not possible to see how active the brain is when it is grieving. Shear says that grief is not a single emotion but a group of emotions.

Many people who are mourning for the Queen are really grieving. "We experience a loss as a part of ourselves, even for those who don't meet the Queen," says O'Connor. A period of one's own personal history and cultural history is still missing.

The article was published on September 14th, 2022.