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A good cry is all we need to cheer ourselves up. Proven by scientists.
Recent studies show that crying is only good for us: the mood will rise immediately, and after some time we feel even better than before we burst into tears.
“Our study demonstrates for the first time a clear link between crying and a subsequent improvement in mood,” writes Asmir Gračanin, a psychologist at the University of Tilburg (Holland), who specializes in the study of emotions, in his work.
Previous studies have produced conflicting results. In one experiment, subjects were asked to recall and describe a sad story. As a result, scientists came to the conclusion that those who first burst into tears, then came to a cheerful mood. However, in another experiment, in which people’s mood was assessed on a certain scale immediately after crying, it was recorded that people feel worse. Asmir Grachanin’s team decided to study the mood of people in three situations: immediately after crying, after 20 minutes and after an hour and a half.
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- I cry for nothing
To make people cry (72 people took part in the experiment), they were shown the film “Life is Beautiful” (dir. Roberto Benigni) – about the attempts of a Jewish father to protect his son in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Or “Hachiko” (dir. Lasse Hellström) is about a devoted dog who waits at the station for his master even years after his death. For most of us, watching the Hachiko trailer is enough to make us cry. This is exactly what happened in 69% of cases after watching a movie about a dog and in 49% after the scenes of Life is Beautiful. While the participants watched and cried, two independent researchers watched them. After people were able to calm down a little, they were immediately asked to fill out questionnaires designed to assess mood. Then they did it twice more: after 20 and after 90 minutes.
To understand how tears affect mood, Asmir Grachanin and his team compared the responses before and after the experiment. They noted that those who felt worse immediately after the end of the film returned to their original mood after 20 minutes. Interestingly, at the 90-minute mark, those who cried while watching the movie felt better than before the movie show. Those participants who did not cry at all did not notice any changes in their mood: neither for the better, nor for the worse.
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- Don’t suppress your emotions!
“Even if, having calmed down, a person felt that his mood worsened, after a while it will definitely improve,” Asmir Grachanin sums up. In addition, he claims that tears help us calm down after stress or emotional shock, regulate temperature and blood pressure. The researcher believes that we should not hide our tears, especially in front of those who love and care for us.
Подробнее см. Amir Gračanin et al. «Why crying does and sometimes does not seem to alleviate mood: A quasiexperimental study», Motivation and Emotion, August 2015.