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Sadness is the most powerful human emotion, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that grief lasts longer than other emotions like shame, anger, boredom and amazement because people need more time to contemplate and cope with the events that triggered it. Sadness tends to be associated with events of greater impact like death, accidents and loss.

Lead researchers Philippe Verduyn and Saskia Lavrijsen of the University of Leuven in Belgium said the latest study is the first to provide clear evidence to explain why some emotions linger for longer periods of time.

The latest study involved 233 high school students who were asked to recollect recent emotional episodes and report their duration. Participants also had to state how they coped with the emotions.

Sadness was found to last longer than the other 26 emotions examined in the study. The study revealed that shame, surprise, fear, disgust, boredom, being touched, irritated or feeling relief lasted only briefly.

Further analysis revealed that emotions that last a shorter time are generally triggered by less important life events, whereas long-lasting emotions are generally caused by more important, consequential life events that have long-lasting implications.

 The study also revealed that duration is a factor that can differentiate between very similar emotions. Researchers noted that guilt lasts longer than shame, and anxiety lasts longer than fear.

"Rumination is the central determinant of why some emotions last longer than others. Emotions associated with high levels of rumination will last longest," Verduyn said in a news release.

"Emotions of shorter duration are typically - but, of course, not always - elicited by events of relatively low importance. On the other hand, long-lasting emotions tend to be about something highly important," Lavrijsen concluded.

The findings are published in the journal Motivation and Emotion.