Why do people cry?
-- asks David from Internetland
Emily V. Driscoll • October 23, 2006
![[CREDIT: Jillian Balfour]](https://scienceline.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/cry.jpg)
[CREDIT: Jillian Balfour]
You’re watching the final scene in Thelma and Louise, and you’re on your third handkerchief. You turn your tear stained face to the side and look through blurred, saline-flooded vision at your cat, who is staring back at you witnessing the curious spectacle. Why is it that humans can be reduced to blubbering messes, while other members of the animal kingdom don’t seem to let out even a sniffle?
We have tear ducts to lubricate and protect our eyes from dust and other particles. The ducts are under the upper eyelids and produce a salty liquid—a tear-–-that gets spread throughout the eye after each blink. Animals too have the ability to produce tears, but not necessarily for the same reasons that we humans produce them.
Three types of tears are generated by the human eye. Basal tears protect the eye and keep it moist. Reflex tears flush out the eye when it becomes irritated. And emotional tears flow in response to sadness, distress, or physical pain.
Studies have shown that emotional tears contain more manganese, an element that affects temperament, and more prolactin, a hormone that regulates milk production. Sobbing out manganese and prolactin is thought to relieve tension by balancing the body’s stress levels and eliminating build ups of the chemicals, making the crier feel better.
But this minor physiological benefit aside, the most likely reason we produce emotional tears is because it’s a means of communication. Before babies can speak, they can cry. The only way for infants to express frustration, pain, fear, or need is to cry. Adults may use crying to bond with other humans. Expressing sadness can prompt comfort and support from peers. Different languages can provide barriers to spoken communication, but emotions are universal. There are also culturally acceptable reasons for crying that bring people together, such as at funerals or weddings.
Though there is a significant debate over whether animals have emotions and can express them, some animals do appear to cry for emotional reasons. Elephants seem to grieve when a family member dies and will guard the body and travel long distances to view it. Elephant experts at the London Zoo once told Charles Darwin that the animals do indeed mourn. Chimpanzees also appear to cry, but some scientists still insist that the tears released by these animals are strictly for cleaning the eye.
Whether or not animals shed tears for emotional reasons has yet to be scientifically proven. Humans, however, can and do dissolve into tears for any number of reasons. Cleansing the eye, relieving stress, conveying pain, communication, and societal assimilation can all lead to an empty tissue box. So weeping after that sappy movie might not mean that you are a total wuss after all. In fact, it may mean that you are behaving like a perfectly normal human being.
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168 Comments
I heard somewhere though, that you cried our of fear frustration and anger, or from being overwhelmed, not really out of sadness?
oh, and pain.
I am a preacher and let me tell you, I am using this in my sermon on sunday night this is a great study of how and why humans cry
Usually when I meet a psychology major on campus, I ask them one question: Why do we cry?
The answers vary to say the least. Most are dumbfounded by the question. It’s interesting to think of emotional tears as a means of communication like yelling out “Pay Attention To ME!”
The more we understand ourselves and the more we neutralize our neuro-network, then perhaps we will dry up our emotional tears and get on with our lives. Who knows?
p.s. Radioflyer was the first movie to make me cry as a kid. My sister’s was All Dogs Go To Heaven. It’s interesting the cultural moments that trigger our need for flushing out the system.
And speaking of vomit and tears from above. I became so upset once after breaking up with my girlfriend that I drove away from the house in tears. As I was crying and barely making myself along the straight road, I just up and puked out the window. Weird.
during grief the body wants to cleanse itself.
excuse e moir
mes francais ce super
je mange une chocalate
yummmmmm
salut
p.s vous all suck
I agree with andrew, i believe that when u feel any emotional stress, ur body automatically tries to cleanse and rehabilitate itself. i mean who doesnt feel better after a warm shower? u know….like a self-comferting thing..
this article was very well written. It was very imformational and it helped me a lot for an anatomy paper i had to write. :)
Animals definitely feel emotion, anyone who has had a pet should know that.
Isn’t the word cries not crys.
it is true that cries do release person from stress..but what is actually the mechanism occured in our eyes when we experienced some emotional situation and sometimes why do people tend to cry non-stop and how did the tears run out and where is the water comes from??any scientific explanation behind this, i really need to know..
wow. i cry a lot. i really i do. this artical was SO deep…. i couldn’t help but cry. i was just devastatedto find out that when you cry it has health benefits,,, especially becasue i’m the kind of person who HATES being healthy…. wow just writing this amazing comment is making me cry..
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MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!
(the beauty of my tree made me cry!)
i cry for only 2 reasons.
1. i shit myself and lick windows.
2. i shit myself and lick windows.
i cant help it…. and nobody exept Larry the cow understands me. i feel so alone…. but then i go outside and larry is there waiting for me…
one day he was so happy to see me that he tramples my face and broke my glasses…. but i know it was just an accident. LArry was the best thing to ever happen to me. I am crying just thinking about everything Larry has done for me…. in fact i think i’ll go lick a window in memory of this fine cow. (ps. it offends me when people say “bull shit” becasue larry was a bull until my master cut his testacles off and he became gay. so from now on please say “cow shit!” thank you!
why people cry
why the heart is stop
OMD
MY EYE LOOKS LIKE THAT
Yep, sorrow & sadness do it for me. Total strangers on the tube (that I know are acting) get my best tears. Crying, in my opinion, is an emotion all to itself, not just a response to sadness or happiness. I’m often extremely sad and extremely happy, am I beyond shedding tears? When I cry I generally think God is showing himself, he has shown his grace through my tears ~ sadness will lift and be washed away. In return, I’ll work on eliminating the cause of the sorrow.
Peace
I have been told that when a person cries the only reason is because that person is feeling sorry for themselves????? Please help me as I absolutly do not believe this.
I agree that this article, or whatever you want to call it, is well written/typed.
My favorite part in the article was definitely the part about animals and their emotions. I read each and every comment word for word and my favorite comment is #64. :D
I stumbled upon this article, because I was looking up a quote by Crying Wolf from Metal Gear Solid 4, because one of my friends from school told me that I looked like her, so one day I got curious and I looked her up on YouTube. A few lines that interested me (from which she said) were “Cry if you need to … I’ve cried myself dry, so cry as much as you like. I will be there to listen.”
I pasted what she said into the Yahoo search bar and from all of that said, it’s obvious how this article was linked to what I was searching for. :P
Btw, I know this is a long comment, but that French comment was seriously horrible. x] Also, I think I have great grammar for a 15 year old and half of these comments are so improper and misspelled. Thanks God for spell check, right? Lmao!
-Jamie
But, why do people *cry*? If people are stressed and have an overload of those chemicals and hormones, why can’t they just release tears instead of sobbing and having all of the other physical actions that accompany crying?
Very, very good article. I have always wondered this.
luv this article! i was searching for something to do my article (WSNR) in science class for and all of a sudden my sister started crying. i got interested and started googling it and found scienceline! (not a first time user)
love ya all-_-
I love this whole page! It made me laugh. I actually just got done crying cuz my girlfriend.
:( so I was just curious to know why I cry! Although I know.
And really I cry because I’m sad or hurt, sometimes very angry. I believe that crying is healthy but I also believe that it can be un healthy if you’re doing it for attention in a negative way to continue feeling sorry for yourself.
Many times I cry when I really feel sadness and lonelyness deep in my stomach’s little soul. When my girlfriend and I fight I cry, because it’s very painful and it hurts. Or EVEN when she just sounds mean or insensitive in her voice!but because I am so sensitive…I also cry because of dissapointment, or when I feel my brothers and sisters pain.
But I only cry when I feel it! If Its something I think about that I am sensitive to, I tear up. If I feel it, if my body feels my emotions… I just cry so hard and loud depending on what it is. It doesn’t ever feel good to cry, but atleast I know why I am. And I will admit whenever I feel lonely, I cry for myself.
However, I cry hard but quiet when I feel lonely or sad for real personal reasons and I squeeze my pillow. But when I’m angry or upset because of a right then issue I cry loud and VERY hard, but where its still private. Its weird because when I’m crying because of a then issue its usually something I can get over! But honestly I think that the more intense cry is somewhat releasing those other feelings of real deep emotional feelings with my then issues.
And of course I always feel better with a vent cry.
But yes, CRY!!! Its good.
BY THE WAY
I love my girlfriend she’s the best jerkiest tear jerker JERK EVER!and when I cry with her or because of her its because she is soley the most important person to me ever.
But like the old wiseman said…
Crying is like your bowels! If you don’t let the bad stuff out in someway, then you’re constipated with loads of little balls, waiting…….. And waiting………………..until “BOOM!” Your rectum EXPLODES!!!!
Its just natural, so do it!
I was crying for no reason yesterday, decided to investigate….a friend of mine happened to be covering drug withdraw in school yesterday as well. I mentioned that I had been trying to quit pot – hadn’t smoked it since Sunday…she said that was one of the main symptoms of the withdraw – crying for no reason. Usually I have no appetite, don’t hardly eat for days, and cry…which gives me a reason – hunger. This time I have an appetite, but was crying anyways.
It was quite annoying, really.
iam crying a lot here lately because of being sad because my dad yells at me when i am in truble.
This is a very great piece of information.
It has helped me out alot with my Inquiry project.
THANK YOU!!!!
cool
Dats gr8!
So your saying black people can’t cry because their sad?
Wow I havn’t cried in a while…maybe a few tears on the last day of school last week..my tears will turn into a river but I need to build a bridge and get the hell over it
i love lil miss geeky
ztrasbitte
pluchova
nichevo
Pandas are dying out mainly because of one main reason: habitat loss. Their main source
of food is bamboo, which takes a long time to grow. This problem wasn’t present when
pandas were spread throughout the massive south-east of Asia, including China. Hence,
when a forest of bamboo was being consumed by them, they could simply move to an-
other bamboo forest, but the supply grew harder to find or reach.
lollll
okay i just sat there and read the comments and half of u guys are sooo retarted!!!!
first of all, if u hav a nasty comment, keep it to urself. nobody wants to hear it! tht was an amazing article and id like to c u do better…
… which we all know u cant. im only 12 but i can tell u one thing, this author is awesome and he shuld keep writing becuz he just got me an A on my report
i rely liked tht article… it was rely educational :)
I agree with #83, what’s the point of leaving nasty comments, it’s pathetic.
I thought this article was really informative, well written and easy to read. I myself cry quite alot and like many of you when i’m angry or frustrated, when i’ve had to bite my tongue when dealing with fools at work. I hate it because i feel it makes me look weak!
But after reading this i don’t think i really care how it makes me look to people’s who’s opinions are too pointless to concern me. I’m pleased that’s it’s the realise of those troublesome chemicals, i always feel much better after a good cry once i’ve gotten over the embarrassment and this explains why.
Nice to see so many supportive comments too :o)
wow. i’ve never thought much about why i cry or how it makes me feel better after but after reading this magnificent article, it realized that its okay to cry.
the author is very intellectual. thank you for sharing the knowledge :)
it will be nice if we analyse crying vs laughing.
Thanks for solving a teatime discussion!
ahahahahahaha what a joke. dude, animals cry, just because they don’t have tears when they cry means nothing. kittens cry as babies, my dog cries whimpers and howls when lonely. What is this nonsense about animals not feeling. ahahahahaahah what ignorant sob wrote this.
init reet
listen k
cryin iz for fkin ponces
if ur ard like us then
u got nwt to worry about
I SAY I SAY
what is going on here
all this chit chat nonsence
i love you all no need to cry
SEX IS GOOD.
AMEN.
I thought it was a good article, i was searching about weather its only humans that cry and found this an interesting read.
I can’t understand the mentality of some people on here though, obviously “Charlotte Thorpe” has some issues, she or he was obviously looking about crying too, to then dismiss what he/she found because of their background maybe your daddy beat you or something more synster.
but i get the Jist of what is being said on the article, we cry to compensate for the over use of chemicals in our body to release them, thus releaving the “sorrow, pity,stress, anger and laughter (we’ve all found something redicoulsly funny, and have ended up crying while laughing) i’m guessing too much of an emoitional chemical in the body which is released can be a bad thing, so it expells it quickly and easily through the tear ducts, bringing the levels back to a sustainable level, i mean it wouldn’t be fun to live if every emotion you felt was rocketed out of you via your bladder or some other unholy place.
we are a species that relies heavily on our emotions, so a natural way of removing too much chemicals released would be the obvious quickest way.
So i suppose people who cry for no reason have less tollerance to the chemcals so the body dispells them sooner than an average person
I’m a 50 year old male that cries nearly every day now. At least half the time it’s not about me. I cry alot thinking about things in my internet friends’ lives. And I’ve never even had any contact with them off the internet. And I cry for animals. It’s always in private, and I can straighten up fast if I need to attend to something. Lately I have been crying more often for myself as the economy worsens and a return to a better life seems increasingly hopeless. I went years without crying when I was younger, and I cried at appropriate times in other years when I was younger. But it seems I can trace the daily crying back to the time I successfully quit smoking cigarettes 7 years ago. I don’t know if that might indicate some chemical imbalance, or the nicotine steeled my nerves, or if the cigarette habit provided me a distraction.
Great Article, answers all my questions.
This helped me a TON with my Enlgish essay(: Thnx A LOT!! :) Really appreciate it =D
94th!!!!!!
Good article,then which part of the brain is responsible for crying?why some people cry when they are happy?
Does anyone know how often humans cry?
That Article helped me and answers all of MY questions.
Thank you for the article. I was revising biology when I realised this question wasn’t answered. The article was beautifully written and wonderfully unbiased.
I also have a few comments about the comments.
1) Many of you should take more care when spelling. Words such as ‘should’ and ‘cried’ are words even my little brother could spell without a problem. If you are unsure of a word, type it into the Google search bar, it should come up with the correct spelling.
2) If you disagree with this article, discuss it like adults. This means no harassment, calmly putting your point across and then backing it up with some research.
Some of the questions raised were very interesing ones. I will be sure look further into it.
I am 32 man, not gay, I get teased after work for stupid shit and I don’t know how to deal with it. If it didn’t bother me, they would stop teasing. But it does bother me, so now I am in tears on my drive home because I am upset. Now I want to quit because I shouldn’t have to feel this way. Pisses me off that I am tearing up but no one see me tear up, I do it in private. I think there is something wrong with me and I shouldn’t be so emotional. How can I stop? I also cry if their is something sad in a movie. Might be something to that to much hormones because I do build muscle fast from working out and my brother is about the same. I have seen him tear up in a movie too. He is a Officer Pilot in the AF and he got drug tested. They thought he might be using steroids because of high testosterone. I think I might be depressed but I don’t believe in therapy or drugs. I used to smoke pot and that helped with the emotions but I quit because of long term effects and the stigma that follows being a pot smoker in today’s society. I do not drink and never been a drinker, only social drinker and I never get drunk. I moved to help my mother who almost died to a aneurysm and now needs daily assistance. My only real friends are about 8 hour drive away. My goal to fix this is to lose about 40 pound of unwanted fat and be strong mentally and physically. Maybe that will fix every aspect in my life like getting a better job and a nice girlfriend. That is what I am counting on.