MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Asmir Gračanin, PhD Tilburg University Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology & Department of Communication and Information Sciences Tilburg The Netherlands Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Gračanin: Background for this study are primarily the results from previous paper and pencil studies in which people (retrospectively) claimed that crying made them feel better, which also corresponds to popular cultural beliefs. The remaining background were the results from lab studies that showed mood decreases immediately following crying episodes that were typically induced by emotional films. So, as you can see in both cases background is quite devoid of any theory, but it represented enough motivation to try to see what is really happening here. In addition, human tears are surprisingly understudied and we do not know exactly what is their function, so any research that looks for their intra-individual as well as inter-individual functions is badly needed. In this laboratory study we found that those individuals that cried felt much worse immediately after crying (which corresponds to previous lab studies), but their mood recovered surprisingly quickly (new finding), and finally it went even above the initial levels, that is, they felt even a bit better than before the emotional film that made them cry (corresponds to previous retrospective but not lab studies). No mood changes were observed in those that did not cry. Therefore, it seems that there is something to the popular belief that crying makes one feel better. However, we suspect that people could misinterpret that large mood improvement, which appears just necessarily after the initial mood deterioration, as a general mood improvement. So it is a strong return to initial mood levels that people could experience as a relief. In addition, we did observe a general mood improvement as well, although this effect was quite small. Thus, if there is general positive effect of crying on one's mood, it seems to take more time. This is the first such laboratory finding. (more…)