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Anger, fear or sadness: Why do we actually cry?
why are we crying Researchers have found that there are different reasons why we shed tears.
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We humans are the only creatures that cry for emotional reasons. But which ones are they exactly? A research team from Germany and Great Britain has summarized five categories.
A touching love story, terrible news or the anger that boils up in you: there are many reasons why we cry. Crying is in our blood – just like laughter, it is an innate reflex. It is estimated that we shed between 70 and 100 liters of tear fluid over the course of our lives, which in turn corresponds to four to five million tears.
So we cry a lot – and as the only species, we also cry for emotional reasons. But what exactly makes us press on the tear gland? In the journal “Motivation and Emotion”, psychologists from the Universities of Ulm and Sussex (Great Britain) divide human tears into five categories: loneliness, powerlessness, overwhelm, harmony and media consumption
Why people cry: Researchers find five categories
The classification into these categories is based on the idea that emotional tears always occur when basic psychological needs are either not met or are very intensely satisfied, the researchers explained. The psychologists point out, for example, that loneliness is caused by an unfulfilled need for closeness – and can thus lead to tears. They also include tears from lovesickness or homesickness in this category.
According to the researchers, tears of joy, on the other hand, occur after the need for harmony has been intensively satisfied – for example at a wedding. As an example of tears due to powerlessness, they cite the reaction to a death notice.
The difference between emotional and basal tears
In order to get to the bottom of human crying, the researchers conducted two online surveys asking people about the reasons for emotional tears. In another experiment, subjects were then asked to keep a daily diary. It was found, for example, that younger people cried more often than older people because they were overwhelmed.
By the way: In addition to the emotional tears, there are also the basal and the reflex tears. While basal tears moisten the eye, reflex tears are caused by external stimuli such as wind or onions. However, the researchers left out both types of tears in their study.
The psychologists see the study as a basis for further research on the phenomenon of emotional tears. So far, there has been a lack of knowledge about the influence tears have on whether one person supports another, said co-author Johannes Keller, head of the Department of Social Psychology at Ulm University. Identifying the five most common reasons for crying could help answer these questions in the future.
Tears as a sign of sadness
Last year, the Dutch psychologist Ad Vingerhoets, together with a team of researchers, found out in a meta-analysis of previous studies on emotional crying that we are still in the early stages of empirical research in this area.
The reason for this, according to the main author of the study: “Tears are often only seen as a sign of sadness.” Vingerhoets has been researching crying for more than 20 years and knows that crying is a form of communication in its own right. He is certain: Our tears not only contain a lot of information about our current condition, but also about us as a person.
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source: Study by Ad Vingerhoets