27 Aug The Science Behind ‘A Good Cry’

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.

Medical Research: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report?

Dr. Gračanin: Clinicians and patients may find it interesting that there is a possibility that crying is beneficial, but they should also have in mind that on average this effects could be very small, which points to the previous strong conclusions of Rottenberg, Bylsma and Vingerhoets who said that crying might be beneficial only for some people and in certain situations. In addition, if there are positive effects to be expected from crying, we can conclude that they are more to be the consequence of the positive reactions from others, that crying may elicit as a potentially useful signal. These inter-individual effects of crying are, by our opinion, the first reasons why one can feel better after a good cry.

Medical Research: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?

Dr. Gračanin: Future research should first try to replicate these findings, also by using other measures of well being that correspond to relief and mood improvements. We should also be careful regarding the fact that those who are more prone to cry might also be more prone to mood switches, so we need good methodological tricks to test the same assumptions by excluding the possibility that criers, as emotionally more reactive people, will at certain moment really experience a better mood than other individuals that experienced the same situation. In that sense, we also need long term and continuous measurements, to be able to cover many points in time.

Then finally, if scientists observe that crying reliably results in mood improvements at least for certain types of individuals, then we should look for mechanisms that are responsible. At this moment our suspects are: the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system, changes in oxytocin or endogenous opioids.

Citation:

Asmir Gračanin, Ad J. J. M. Vingerhoets, Igor Kardum, Marina Zupčić, Maja Šantek, Mia Šimić. Why crying does and sometimes does not seem to alleviate mood: a quasi-experimental study. Motivation and Emotion, 2015; DOI: 1007/s11031-015-9507-9

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:, & Asmir Gračanin, PhD (2015). The Science Behind ‘A Good Cry’ 

Last Updated on August 27, 2015 by Marie Benz MD FAAD