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M Jaffer <muntazir@...> wrote:
| Tracks of Our Tears |
By the time U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder, D-Colo., right, broke down and cried while announcing that she was bowing out of the race for the presidency in 1987, she had probably already “let it all out.” (Aaron Tomlinson/AP Photo) |
Author Examines the Mysteries of Weeping
By Claudine Chamberlain
Tom Lutz knew it was a bad sign when he started taking notes every time an emotional movie made him cry. | | |
“That’s not the way to enjoy a good cry,” he says. “I realized I was missing the very essence of the melodrama.”
But in researching his new book, Crying: The Natural & Cultural History of Tears, Lutz was trying to figure out all the social and psychological mysteries behind tears. So you can hardly blame him for paying more attention to his own.
One of the things the University of Iowa professor figured in his studies of tears in art, literature, physiology and psychology is that much conventional wisdom about why we cry isn’t supported by fact. Following are some examples of common ideas about crying that don’t always ring true.
The Crying Game
Crying is a form of catharsis, of “letting it all out.” Although people will tell you anecdotally that they feel better after they’ve had a good cry, tests in the psychology lab show something a little different. Studies of weepers have found that the tears start flowing after people have already experienced an emotional release, Lutz says.
That means that tears don’t release our emotions, but rather redirect them. Tears give us a physical outlet for what we’re feeling, shifting attention from our thoughts to our bodies. Lutz compares it to Alice in Wonderland, floating away in a deluge of her own tears.
Randolph Cornelius, a social psychologist at Vassar College, agrees that tears aren’t the cathartic force most people assume they are. His research has shown that whether we feel better after crying depends in large part on how others around us reacted to our tears. If tears of anger escalated an argument, we feel worse. If tears of sadness brought consolation, we feel better.
World Wide Weepers
Crying helps rid your body of toxins, staving off depression. Tears contain about 30 times as much manganese as is typically found in the bloodstream. And autopsies on chronically depressed people have revealed high concentrations of manganese in their brains.
Some researchers have drawn a link between these two facts by suggesting that crying helps release manganese in the body, preventing its build-up in the brain. Tears, they said, were essential to mental health. But Lutz says that argument doesn’t hold up, since the majority of tears actually get reabsorbed back into the body through ducts in the nasal cavity.
Men don’t cry. Worldwide, women do cry more than men. But the difference isn’t as huge as you might think. Citing figures from an international study, Cornelius says that men in the United States said they cried 1.88 times a month, while U.S. women cried 3.55 times. Bulgarian men are the least weepy, crying only .43 times a month.
People can’t control when they cry. When your chin starts shaking and your eyes get drippy, you might swear that you have no control over when you weep and when you don’t. But Lutz says tears are often a culturally programmed response to certain situations. “Why else would you be able to cry at a stranger’s wedding?” he asks.
He cites a study of native Maori people in New Zealand which found that teenage boys who had been sent off to British boarding schools were no longer able to cry at key points during tribal ceremonies once they got home. The tears that had previously come so naturally had been schooled out of them.
Crocodile Tears? No
Some animals cry. Despite a famous and compelling story about an elephant who wept when punished — as well as other tales of tears in poodles, seals, beavers and dolphins — these accounts were impossible to verify, Lutz says. Even if the animals did tear up, he adds, there’s no way to know if the they were emotional tears or merely the result of dust in the eye.
“As far as we know,” Cornelius says, “only humans cry emotionally.”
For every 12 books written about laughter, Lutz notes, there’s only one on tears. So, for the most part, crying remains a psychological mystery. But even as scientists search for answers, says Lutz, sometimes you just have to let the tears flow. 
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| Tracks of Our Tears |
By the time U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder, D-Colo., right, broke down and cried while announcing that she was bowing out of the race for the presidency in 1987, she had probably already “let it all out.” (Aaron Tomlinson/AP Photo) |
Author Examines the Mysteries of Weeping
By Claudine Chamberlain
Tom Lutz knew it was a bad sign when he started taking notes every time an emotional movie made him cry. | | |
“That’s not the way to enjoy a good cry,” he says. “I realized I was missing the very essence of the melodrama.”
But in researching his new book, Crying: The Natural & Cultural History of Tears, Lutz was trying to figure out all the social and psychological mysteries behind tears. So you can hardly blame him for paying more attention to his own.
One of the things the University of Iowa professor figured in his studies of tears in art, literature, physiology and psychology is that much conventional wisdom about why we cry isn’t supported by fact. Following are some examples of common ideas about crying that don’t always ring true.
The Crying Game
Crying is a form of catharsis, of “letting it all out.” Although people will tell you anecdotally that they feel better after they’ve had a good cry, tests in the psychology lab show something a little different. Studies of weepers have found that the tears start flowing after people have already experienced an emotional release, Lutz says.
That means that tears don’t release our emotions, but rather redirect them. Tears give us a physical outlet for what we’re feeling, shifting attention from our thoughts to our bodies. Lutz compares it to Alice in Wonderland, floating away in a deluge of her own tears.
Randolph Cornelius, a social psychologist at Vassar College, agrees that tears aren’t the cathartic force most people assume they are. His research has shown that whether we feel better after crying depends in large part on how others around us reacted to our tears. If tears of anger escalated an argument, we feel worse. If tears of sadness brought consolation, we feel better.
World Wide Weepers
Crying helps rid your body of toxins, staving off depression. Tears contain about 30 times as much manganese as is typically found in the bloodstream. And autopsies on chronically depressed people have revealed high concentrations of manganese in their brains.
Some researchers have drawn a link between these two facts by suggesting that crying helps release manganese in the body, preventing its build-up in the brain. Tears, they said, were essential to mental health. But Lutz says that argument doesn’t hold up, since the majority of tears actually get reabsorbed back into the body through ducts in the nasal cavity.
Men don’t cry. Worldwide, women do cry more than men. But the difference isn’t as huge as you might think. Citing figures from an international study, Cornelius says that men in the United States said they cried 1.88 times a month, while U.S. women cried 3.55 times. Bulgarian men are the least weepy, crying only .43 times a month.
People can’t control when they cry. When your chin starts shaking and your eyes get drippy, you might swear that you have no control over when you weep and when you don’t. But Lutz says tears are often a culturally programmed response to certain situations. “Why else would you be able to cry at a stranger’s wedding?” he asks.
He cites a study of native Maori people in New Zealand which found that teenage boys who had been sent off to British boarding schools were no longer able to cry at key points during tribal ceremonies once they got home. The tears that had previously come so naturally had been schooled out of them.
Crocodile Tears? No
Some animals cry. Despite a famous and compelling story about an elephant who wept when punished — as well as other tales of tears in poodles, seals, beavers and dolphins — these accounts were impossible to verify, Lutz says. Even if the animals did tear up, he adds, there’s no way to know if the they were emotional tears or merely the result of dust in the eye.
“As far as we know,” Cornelius says, “only humans cry emotionally.”
For every 12 books written about laughter, Lutz notes, there’s only one on tears. So, for the most part, crying remains a psychological mystery. But even as scientists search for answers, says Lutz, sometimes you just have to let the tears flow. 
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SUMMARY
| A weekly column about mental health and psychology. | |
CHAT
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Like Alice in Wonderland, we sometimes seem to float away in a deluge of our own tears.
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