Seeing Through Tears by Judith Kay Nelson

The study found crying with just one other person present was significantly more likely to produce a cathartic effect than doing so in front of a larger group. Given that the most obvious social function of crying is to rally support and sympathy, the emotional impact of the tears depends partly on who is around and what they do. But about 16 percent cited nasty or angry reactions that, no surprise, generally made them feel worse. About 70 percent said that others’ reactions to their breakdown were positive, comforting.

Bylsma of the University of South Florida and Ad Vingerhoets of Tilburg University in the Netherlands, asked 5,096 people in 35 countries to detail the circumstances of their most recent crying episode.

In a study published in the December issue of The Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, Dr. Memory tidies up the mixed episodes - the times when tears brought more shame than relief, more misery than company. Just as researchers have found that people tend, with time, to selectively remember the best parts of their vacations (the swim-up bars and dancing) and forget the headaches, so crying may also appear cathartic in retrospect. “A lot of the data supporting the conventional wisdom is based on people thinking back over time,” he said, “and it’s contaminated by people’s beliefs about what crying should do.” When asked about tearful episodes, most people, as expected, insist that the crying allowed them to absorb a blow, to feel better and even to think more clearly about something or someone they had lost.Īt least that’s the way they remember it - and that’s the rub, said Jonathan Rottenberg, a psychologist at the University of South Florida and a co-author of the review paper. And the physical experience mirrors the psychological one: heart rate and breathing peak during the storm and taper off as the sky clears. Women break down more easily and more often than men, for reasons that are very likely biochemical as well as cultural. Over the years, psychologists have confirmed many common observations about crying. This call for a more nuanced view of crying stems partly from a critique of previous studies.

Seeing Through Tears by Judith Kay Nelson