A superior method is to have participants complete a daily crying diary for an extended period of time, to be completed each night - soon enough to reduce memory distortions, but not too intrusive to interfere with the behaviour under observation. Believe or not, just one diary study of crying has been conducted before. Now Lauren Bylsma and her colleagues have performed the second, involving 97 female undergrads who completed a crying diary, including questions about daily mood and crying context, for between 40 and 73 days. In all, 1004 crying episodes were documented, and all participants cried at least once. Most bouts of crying were triggered by conflict; the next most common reason was loss, followed by personal failing.
Bylsma's headline finding is that crying mostly had little positive benefit, at least not on overall daily mood. Not only did crying episodes tend to be preceded by two days of lower daily mood, they were also associated with lower daily mood on the day of crying and lower daily mood on two successive days afterwards. For mood in the specific moments after a crying session, the results were more encouraging. Most often mood was reported as unchanged (60.8 per cent), but 30 per cent of sessions were associated with a positive mood change, with 8.8 per cent leading to a deterioration in mood.
Other findings included: more intense (but not longer) crying episodes were associated with more positive mood outcomes, as were crying episodes that followed a feeling of inadequacy and that triggered a positive change in the situation. Also, crying in the company of one other person was associated more often with positive mood change than was crying alone or crying in the company of multiple people. Conflict tears tended not to be associated with a positive mood change, undermining the idea that tears can defuse social tensions.
The study has its limitations - for example, the mood scale only had a three-point range, and of course it's a shame that men weren't included too. But even granted these limitations, the researchers emphasised that theirs was "the first extended examination of the relationship between crying and mood using detailed contextual information from multiple crying episodes and, as such, represents an important step towards understanding this striking human behaviour."
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Bylsma, L., Croon, M., Vingerhoets, A., and Rottenberg, J. (2011). When and for whom does crying improve mood? A daily diary study of 1004 crying episodes. Journal of Research in Personality, 45 (4), 385-392 DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2011.04.007Related Digest item: What does crying do for you?
This post was written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
This is definitely interesting! But I had two big thoughts when I was reading it - first, couldn't it simply be that people who do cry, despite not experiencing a boost of positive affect, are avoiding greater levels of negative affect? In other words, crying doesn't actively make them feel *better*, but it helps them avoid feeling *worse*? Kind of like the argument my mother always told me when I took Advil and my headache didn't go away: "Well, maybe if you hadn't taken it you'd be feeling even worse!" That sort of idea.
ReplyDeleteSecond of all, since I imagine people who cry frequently are different in many ways from those who don't, I'd be interested to see what happens when frequent criers are explicitly instructed to try *not* crying. The study says there's no real benefit to crying, but I imagine if someone is predisposed to cry as a response to an upsetting situation, making them suppress this emotional response would certainly have some consequences (I'd guess negative) that wouldn't be present in people who just naturally don't cry as frequently.
Thank you for the post! It was a very interesting read.
Depending on the culture, including men may be problematic.
ReplyDeleteI cried several times during a divorce 7 years ago, and also when two of my grandparents died, in 1999 and 1994. Before that was during a breakup in 1991 and a friend's death in 1990. I can't recall any other incidents, except during childhood. Despite this infrequency, during these occasions I've felt as if I wasn't being as strong as society would expect of me.
I don't know that this diary approach would work on men like myself. In fact, most men I know probably wouldn't have cried as often as I have.
I agree Paul. I literally can't remember the last time I cried.
ReplyDeleteStill, if this study is to be believed, at least we're not missing out on anything. An interesting follow up would be (and it'd also test the first commenter's criticism) to have the sample split into an experimental condition which abstains from crying and see how that affected their mood versus the control condition who wouldn't abstain from crying.
This would still be flawed, obviously, because we can't ensure both conditions are under equal crying pressures such as stressors.
yes sometime it does,, when you are feeling lots of pressure and there is no other way,, at that time you may feel crying and there are such many reason,, once you cry you always feel better,,i am serving many antiimpotence medicine to men and teach them to fight against life,, thanks for sharing,,
ReplyDeleteInteresting article. I think that crying just sort of releases the welling top of sad feelings - and that makes you feel better, that you didn't hold it back. Just sort of relieving in a way - perhaps not necessarily happier, just not so bogged down or something.
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