A recent study published in Collabra: Psychology has found that the emotional benefits of crying depend heavily on the reasons behind the tears. While people often assume that a good cry provides immediate emotional relief, the research suggests that shedding tears does not universally improve a person’s mood. Scientists conducted the new study to better understand how crying affects adults in their natural, everyday environments.
Methodology and Data Collection
Scientists tracked 106 adults over a period of four weeks to measure how long it takes for a person’s mood to change after crying. The participants installed a customized tracking application on their personal smartphones to log their experiences. Whenever participants cried, they were instructed to immediately log the event in the app and record the specific trigger.
The app then automatically prompted them to report their emotional state again 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and 60 minutes later. To ensure they did not miss any tears, the researchers also asked participants to complete an end-of-day survey. This daily survey captured any crying episodes the person might have forgotten to log earlier.
Gender Differences and Emotional Triggers
The scientists found that emotional crying is a very common human behavior. Nearly 87 percent of the participants cried at least once, averaging about five crying episodes over the four-week period. Women tended to cry more often than men, with women averaging nearly six crying episodes over the month.
Men averaged just under three crying episodes and tended to cry in response to feelings of helplessness or in reaction to media. Across the entire group, the most frequent cause of crying was media consumption. Tears triggered by feeling overwhelmed or lonely were the most intense and lasted the longest.
Emotional Outcomes and Future Research
When looking at emotional outcomes, the scientists found no overall evidence that crying automatically provides immediate relief. Crying in response to personal struggles led to a sharp drop in positive emotions and a strong increase in negative emotions. These negative feelings lingered for quite a while and dragged down the person’s overall mood for the rest of the day.
"Crying is a basic human behavior. I was astonished that very little research has been done on crying in field-like settings," said study author Stefan Stieger.
While the study provides detailed insights into human emotion, there are potential misinterpretations and limitations to keep in mind. Because the study relied entirely on self-reporting, participants might have inaccurately judged their own emotions. The study design also did not allow the scientists to compare crying to experiencing a similar strong emotion without shedding tears.
