why do we cry?

Answers to why do we cry

Nature is loaded with odd traits and behaviors. There are elephant trunks, the widely separated eyes of hammerhead sharks, and the wacky, effervescent mating dances that sandhill cranes do. But nothing is quite as strange as human crying.

It does not seem odd to us, of course. We do it often enough ourselves and witness someone else doing it nearly every day. According to one study of more than 300 men and women conducted in 1980s at the University of Minnesota, women cry five times a month or so and men about once every four weeks. And the first thing a baby does when it enters the world is bawl to let everyone know it has arrived healthy and whole. It is not the howling itself that makes our crying unusual; it is the tears that go along with it. Other animals may whimper, moan and wail, but none sheds tears of emotion--not even our closest primate cousins. Apes do have tear ducts, as do other animals, but their job extends only to ocular house cleaning, to bathe and heal the eyes. But in our case, at some point long ago, one of our ancestors evolved a neuronal connection between the gland that generates tears and the parts of the brain that feel, sense and express deep emotion.

Most mammals will produce tears in response to extreme pain or other stimuli, but crying as an emotional reaction is considered by many to be a uniquely human phenomenon, possibly due to humans' advanced self-awareness. Some studies suggest that elephants and gorillas may cry as well.

In nearly all cultures, crying is seen as a specific act associated with tears trickling down the cheeks and accompanied by characteristic sobbing sounds. Emotional triggers are most often anger and grief, but crying can also be triggered by sadness, joy, fear, laughter or humor, frustration, or other strongly-experienced emotions.

In many cultures, crying is associated with babies and children. Some cultures consider crying to be undignified and infantile, casting aspersions on those who cry publicly, except if it is due to the death of a close friend or relative. In most cultures, it is more socially acceptable for women to cry than men.

Some modern therapy movements such as Re-evaluation Counseling believe that crying is beneficial to health and mental wellbeing, and positively encourage it.

An insincere display of grief or dishonest remorse is called crocodile tears, from the ancient anecdote that crocodiles would pretend to weep while luring or devouring their prey.

Why do we cry and laugh
As humans we laugh and cry, but seldom do we question how, or why. There are many processes involved in both responses. Cultures around the world allow both crying and laughing as acceptable behaviors. With crying, as well as laughter, the body goes through physical or chemical changes. Crying and laughter are beneficial to us both emotionally and physically. We must have them to function in the world.  

Crying is a more complicated process than one would at first imagine. First of all, there are really three different types of tears. Basal tears keep our eyes lubricated constantly. Reflex tears are produced when our eyes get irritated, like with onions or when something gets into our eyes. The third kind of tear is produced when the body reacts emotionally to something. Each type of tear contains different amounts of chemical proteins and hormones. Scientists have discovered that the emotional tears contain higher levels of manganese and the hormone prolactin, and this contributes in a reduction of both of these in the body; thus helping to keep depression away. Many people have found that crying actually calms them after being upset, and this is in part due to the chemicals and hormones that are released in the tears.  

How then actually do we cry? The psychic tears (or emotional tears) require an emotional response, or trigger to be activated. This response can be caused by an outside source, either pain or loss of love, etc., or from an inside source (self-realization of one's life and others). When emotions affect us, the nervous system stimulates the cranial nerve, in the brain and this sends signals to the neurotransmitters to the tear glands. Thus, we cry .The largest tear gland, the lacrimal gland produces the tears of emotion and reflex. Many believe that the body, in times of emotional stress, depends on this gland to release excess amounts of chemicals and hormones, returning it to a stable state.  

There are many culturally acceptable reasons to cry in society .The first accepted reason to cry is probably death. Grieving includes crying and often times it was believed that if someone did not cry, they would suffer physically because they did not release their pain. Experiences in life and love are other reasons society allows us to cry. Women have been allowed to cry more than men traditionally, but the benefits of crying seem to suggest that men need to cry more. Cultures around the world have crying out of obligation, for show, and for grief and pain. Each culture defines where and when it is acceptable to cry. Cultures, in some parts of the world, sometimes determine the length of crying and mourning. For example, in the Zuni culture, a chief allows the mourners of the dead to cry for four days after which the chief says that the death occurred four years ago, and now the mourning may end.  

As well as with crying, laughter is also acceptable culturally for a variety of reasons. Often, just because of where a person lives, something may be funny and make them laugh. It may not be funny anywhere else in the world. Also, their culture and community may dictate what is appropriate to laugh at and what is not. People have often said, "Laughter is the best medicine," and they may not be too far from the truth. When we laugh, the body makes facial gestures and sounds. The body relaxes during laughter. The diaphragm, abdominal, respiratory, facial, leg and back muscles all get a workout. Scientists have found that  

laughing one hundred times is equal to a ten-minute workout on a rowing machine, or fifteen minutes on an exercise bike. Laughter helps promote healing in the body by lowering blood pressure and increasing blood flow. When we laugh, the production of T -cells that destroy tumors and viruses increase, and more Gamma interferon (which is a disease fighting protein) is released. Laughter has been found to reduce the amount of stress hormones and help us cope with our lives better. When others laugh, sometimes the laughter can be contagious. Everyone around them starts to laugh. Some people, when stressed or upset, go to a funny movie or a comedy club hoping to laugh all of their negative emotions away.  

There is a special name for the physiological study of laughter. It is called Gelotology. Scientists have discovered that within four- tenths of a second of seeing something humorous, an electrical wave moved through the cerebral cortex of the brain. If the wave took a negative charge, there was laughter. Many areas of the brain are involved in making us laugh. The emotional, the intellectual, and the sensory processing parts of our brain all playa role in stimulating the motor sections of our brain to physically make us laugh.  

Researchers have found that laughter is used in making and strengthening our connections with each other. People that are more dominant, like a boss or head of a family, for example, use more humor than others around them. Laughter becomes away to show power over the emotional climate of the group. When someone is embarrassed or threatened, laughter can defuse the situation by deflecting the anger and accepting humiliation.  

We need both laughter and tears to help us function in society. Crying relieves stress, reduces hormone and chemical levels in the body, and helps us return to a calm state. Laughter relieves stress, stimulates healing, exercises certain parts of the body, and helps in human bonding. That is why crying and laughing are beneficial to us both emotionally and physically.

Digging more deeper
Newborns cry (I think tearing develops soon, but am not sure) for reasons like hunger and pain, and later the reasons extend to social concerns (e.g., need for attention). Thus, it seems reasonable to explain the link between crying and sadness as being an extension of the negative associations of the very earliest crying. Early crying is both endogenous (no obvious cause--full bladder?) and reflexive (to stimuli), but during first year becomes "tuned" to the more negative situations.

Crying works in that it elicits responses from caregivers, who then alleviate the negative cause (like hunger). Thus, one should consider crying (and facial tearing) as communicative signals designed to enhance the likelihood of someone coming and taking care of things. Perhaps the greater the signal (louder, shriller cry and more tearing) the more likely the response, thus reinforcing the combination of the sound, tears, and negative situation, and making it more likely one will elicit the other in the future (like hearing someone sobbing causing you to tear).

Perhaps an interesting piece of the puzzle: In the waking behavior of newborns (which is not a whole lot), newborns are largely unresponsive to environment when crying (only other such unresponsive time is during quiet sleep). If much early stimulation is negative from the child's point of view, perhaps crying helps to shut it out.

The most interesting part of the question I think is why tearing? I came across only one article--highly speculative--in which the fellow looked at relationships among crying episodes of adults and found that the only commonality was help--either requesting or offering it. He speculates that tears provide an additional signal in requesting help in infants/children--a conspicuous facial signal--and that perhaps tears are selected for this task because they are already present via their reflexive association to physical pain and ocular trauma (e.g., eyes watering to get dust out).

One thing to tell your insightful youngster is that tearing is also associated with positive as well as negative feelings, and that this might be related to what the fellow above was talking about in terms of a relationship between help and tearing.

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