"Given this relationship of sighing to mental loads and emotion, it is surprising that sighing itself has not been a topic of empirical psychological research until the twenty-first century. About the only place sighing makes an appearance is in studies of panic disorder, where it has been shown that such patients 'hit reset' about twice as frequently as control subjects — an average of 21 times versus 10.8 times over a thirty-minute period of sitting quietly in a comfortable chair. Yet, there has been little interest in the interpretation of sighs generally, although there are certainly folk psychology understandings. Karl Teigen opened up this area with empirical studies of what sighs mean to the sighers and the observers of sighs. His findings, while reflecting only northern European culture, are interesting, particularly in their illumination of sigher-observer differences. For sighers, the act implicitly carries two messages. First, something is not right, that is, there is a mismatch of how I wish it to be and how it actually is. Perhaps there is a situation in which I begin to see that I'm not going to get what I need, or maybe I'm working hard to reach some end or some solution to a problem, and I realize that I may not be successful. Second, the message is a movement toward acceptance, that is, there is a sense that I must 'let go' of something. Even sighs of relief or pleasure could fit this basic description. Relief could be read as a letting go of negative expectations. Pleasure could be seen as a letting go of agendas and surrendering to the moment. Lover's sighs may be generated by the mismatch of longing for the one not available to us or by the presence of the beloved, to whom we give ourselves — the erotic form of letting go. So sighers most often interpreted their own sighs from this something's wrong/need to let go perspective. As social communication, the meaning of a sigh seems to follow self-knowledge, as the typical interpretation is that the sigher finds something or someone 'hopeless' and is giving up (or letting go).

"Maybe you noticed a spontaneous sigh as you read the last several paragraphs? Maybe one is due right now?"