This belongs in the “it-seems-obvious-but-somebody-actually-studied-it” category: A study by university researchers has found that people who feel bad about feeling bad — that is, people who get sad about their own negativities and judge themselves harshly for having them — wind up with even more mental stress than people who learn to accept their emotions and thoughts.

The study was conducted at the University of California at Berkeley and funded by the National Institute on Aging. The study was conducted by Brett Ford, a University of Toronto assistant professor of psychology; Iris Mauss; a UC-Berkeley associate psychology professor; Oliver John, a UC-Berkeley psychology professor; and graduate student Phoebe Lam of Northwestern University.

The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, looked at more than 1,300 adults in the San Francisco Bay area as well as metropolitan Denver to test the connection between their acceptance of their own emotions and their psychological health.