Is crying beneficial?

Journal of Research in Personality, 2011

We aimed to examine the connections between individual affective characteristics and crying, and to evaluate Rottenberg, Bylsma, and Vingerhoets’ (2008) framework for studying crying and mood. We analyzed the relationship among features of the social environment, mood characteristics of the crier, crying frequency/urge to cry, and mood change across 1004 detailed crying episodes sampled from 97 females. Urge to cry

Emotion, 2007

Theorists have staked out two ostensibly opposing views of human crying as either an arousing behavior that signals distress or a soothing behavior that reduces arousal after distress. The present study examined whether these views of crying might be reconciled by attending to physiological changes that unfold over crying episodes. Sixty female students watched neutral and cry-eliciting films while autonomic physiology, including respiratory sinus arrhythmia and pre-ejection period, was assessed. Crying participants exhibited heart rate increases that rapidly subsided after crying onset. Crying onset was also associated with increases in respiratory sinus arrhythmia and slowed breathing. All crying effects subsided by 4 minutes after onset. It is possible that crying is both an arousing distress signal and a means to restore psychological and physiological balance, depending on how and when this complex behavior is interrogated.

Psychological Topics, 2007

Tears in the Graeco- …, 2009

Emotion Regulation, 2008

Frontiers in Psychology, 2013

This article discusses inter-and intra-personal motives for the regulation of crying, and presents illustrative findings from an online survey (N = 110) exploring why and how people regulate crying in their everyday lives. In line with current theorizing on emotion regulation and crying (e.g., , we propose that emotional crying is regulated using both antecedent-focused techniques targeting the underlying emotion and responsefocused techniques targeting the act of crying itself. Indeed, our survey respondents reported having used both antecedent-and response-focused strategies to either upregulate or down-regulate their crying. Motives for crying regulation may be both inter-and intra-personal and may serve both immediate, pleasure motives, and future, utility motives (Tamir, 2009). Our findings suggest that down-regulation attempts are often driven by interpersonal motives (e.g., protecting the well-being of others; impression management) in addition to intra-personal motives such as maintaining subjective well-being, whereas upregulation attempts are mostly driven by intra-personal motives. Further progress requires methodologies for manipulating or tracking regulation motives and strategies in real-time crying episodes.

Motivation and Emotion, 2015

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Cognition & Emotion, 2002

This study was designed to determine the influence of crying-related variables and country characteristics on positive mood change after crying. It was hypothesized that mood change would be positively associated to crying frequency, Individualism-Collectivism, and the extent of gender empowerment in a country. Masculinity-Femininity and shame were expected to have a negative relation with mood change. Participants were 1680 male and 2323 female students from 30 countries who provided self-report data on their crying behavior. Although bivariate associations yielded inconsistent results, in a regression analysis Masculinity-Femininity, national income, shame, and crying frequency emerged as significant predictors of mood change, all in the anticipated direction. The results suggest that how one feels after a crying episode depends on how common crying is in one's culture and general feelings of shame over crying. It also seems that (perceptions of) role patterns may play an important part in the experience of mood change.

Crying can occur in a great variety of contexts, including fulfilment and happiness as well as failure, loss, and sadness or other negative feelings, such as anger and guilt. Despite such differences, we have tried to identify a unitary underlying psychological cause for crying: perceived helplessness. We explore the different crying situations, describing the basic cognitive ingredients and critical steps in the process leading to crying. We start from those situations which directly imply personal frustration and suffering, then we consider empathic crying, crying for joy, and ''aesthetic'' crying, i.e., crying elicited by aesthetic experiences. We try to show that all of them imply a common core: some frustration (anticipated, actual, or previous), one's attempt to resist, perceived helplessness, and surrender to frustration. Finally, we address both the psychological benefits and costs of crying, either expected or unexpected, showing their links with perceived helplessness.