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The Physical, Emotional, and Intellectual Domains of Crying

Only humans cry emotional tears. No other animals do that. All mammals make tears to clean dry eyes and irritants like onions can create tears, but emotional tears may be one of the only things unique to humans.

We used to think that we were the toolmakers, but a number of animals make tools. And we used to think we were unique in language, but other animals have language. We are unique because we are crybabies. Not in a bad way, but that term sort of helps us frame our "7 Domains of Crying", understanding why we cry and what it signals to others.

Getting back to human babies, they don't make emotional tears until they're about 2 months old. About the same time, they start with the social smile. All baby animals will cry out in distress or when they're separated from their mom or hungry, but human babies add tears at about 2 months.

And as we get older, we keep the tears but mostly leave the crying-out-loud behind. The production of visible tears appears to gain relevance with increasing age while the vocal component, whining and crying, seems to lose significance. In particular, being moved by something sad or sentimental, mostly absent in children, is typically associated with silent tear production. And it really wouldn't be very good for grownups to wail like a 4-year-old does. So, in fact, silent tears with sadness or private tears is kind of a marker of emotional intelligence.

Now, some psychologists think there's a link between visible tear production and the unique kind of prolonged childhood in humans. Children at 10 can certainly be physically strong, they can feed themselves, but they still need the help of adults.

And during this stage, the silent strategy of tears to elicit support from individuals and most likely to provide the desired assistance, the silent support of tears gets a lot more help than wailing. Wailing by children and adolescents mostly turns you off, but silent tears turn your helping on.

Now, adult women cry about four to five times a month, and men zero to one times a month, probably with a huge variation from person to person.

Adult humans shed their emotional tears typically at the most emotional important events in their lives, including positive events like weddings and births of children, as well as negative events such as those involving separation or loss.

The Environmental Domain of Crying

So to cue in the environmental domain, sometimes tears are not from internal sadness or frustration, but from external events like weddings. Why cry at weddings? I know I do. So crying is a way of signaling to our very social environment that we are sad and we need help.

Studies of women, of course women, show sad movies. So you show sad movies and reveal that there are criers and non-criers.

As an aside, everyone of my generation admits to sobbing at the end of the movie "Old Yeller," where the beloved dog dies at the end. And you all have your own crying movies, I'm sure.

Anyway, in this research, both criers and non-criers have an increase in breathing rate and heart rate as they're shown distressingly sad videos. But crying emotional tears is linked to the autonomic nervous system, and criers are more likely to slow their heart rates and have their breathing return to baseline after crying, which is really a healthy adaptive response.

That phrase "just cry and get it all out" or "all you need is a good cry" actually makes physiologic sense, because the non-criers, they kept their breathing elevated and their heart rate elevated where the criers, actually, their heart slowed down and they felt a little bit better.

The Social Domain of Crying

Well, there are cultures where crying is more common than others. And I come of a family of emotional weepers, male and female, but other families are less so. So to help us with the social norms of emotional crying, we have in the virtual Scope studio. She's a professor of anthropology at the University of Utah and Arizona State University, and has studied cultures all over the world.

Dr. Jones: Thanks for joining us, Polly. Polly, you can say, "Nice to be here."

Dr. Wiessner: Yes, Kirtly, thanks for inviting me and I'm delighted to be here.

Dr. Jones: Thanks, Polly. You've seen cultures all over the world.

Dr. Wiessner: Yes.

Dr. Jones: What do you think is the social role of crying?

Dr. Wiessner: Silent crying, I think, is much more a Western phenomenon, because in other cultures, you live in a village with many people and you have to signal your emotional state. So silent crying does occur, but it's not necessarily the most common form.

Now, I work with two cultures. One is the Ju/'hoansi, or Kung Bushmen, in the Kalahari Desert. These are hunter-gatherers. And with the Enga in Papua, New Guinea. You could not have two more different societies. The Bushmen are peaceful. They're funny, they're joking. There's very little violence in this society. The Enga, by contrast, have an enormous amount of violence in everyday life. In warfare, the men are tough warriors. So you have a contrast here of two different societies, and yet we'll see that there are so many things about crying that are in common between the two.

So let's start at the top of the list. Perhaps the most common worldwide is crying when being deceived or failed in love. The Bushmen sit there and when people are deceived to fail in love, they often cry and they sing songs. And a group of close people may come to comfort them or they just may sit by the fire and cry, and people know they're crying, and get it out of their system.

Now, I talked to some of my colleagues, my Enga colleagues. These men are tough guys. They're really tough warriors, a lot of machismo. And I said, "Do men cry in love?" And they said, "Oh, yes, absolutely. They cry particularly when they love a woman and they don't organize a proposal for marriage in time and she goes off and marries another man."

And some of them rarely will cry with friends, but mostly they will go lock themselves in the house and cry, sometimes for days, and they'll feel disoriented and unable to function properly. So that was very interesting to me.

Dr. Jones: So we have this concept of crying or weeping. But in one culture they do it out in public, and in another, they kind of do it a little bit more privately, this weeping, crying from sadness, from loss of a relationship. Did I get that right?

Dr. Wiessner: Yes. Although the Bushmen, they will do that in public.

Dr. Jones: Yeah, do it in public.

Dr. Wiessner: But the Enga, a man is supposed to be strong and dominant, not show any weakness. Some might cry with a friend or two, but many of them just lock themselves away and they cry out loud and they let the tears roll to get over it.

Dr. Jones: Wow.

Dr. Wiessner: The next one, which is common to all societies, is pain. People cry and they cry out loud when they're suffering a lot of pain. This is a signal to elicit support to get help. I think this is probably true in all societies, that people cry when they're overcome with pain. I think one of the real universals in all societies is people cry when they're in deep pain and that elicits attention. It elicits help.

They don't cry silently necessarily, depending on how much energy they have left, but they cry out loud and then people calm and try to comfort them and help them through whatever episode they're having of pain or sickness.

I think the one time when women cry and men do not is that women in these cultures experience a lot of domestic violence. And when women have been beaten up or something, they cry very openly. And this unites a lot of people in their support against the men.

And so in all these cases, the crying elicits social help, and, of course, it relieves the grief.

Dr. Jones: So can you talk a little bit about public crying? Because in this country, people cry, but you hear some cultures where women actually wail, like at a funeral. It's loud and it seems like it's part of the whole funeral thing.

Dr. Wiessner: Yes, it's really interesting. I've been to plenty of Bushmen and Enga funerals, and in both of them, the maternal kin come in and they may destroy part of the village saying that this person wasn't cared for properly and therefore died. But they know this is not true, even if someone is 90.

And then after that, when the Bushmen actually bury the body, they're standing around and they throw handfuls of sand and some incense into the grave. And at that time, they're telling stories, they're chatting, they're cracking jokes, and then suddenly it will hit them and people will just cry and cry and cry. And then again, it turns to another story. So there's no sort of formal way one must behave at Bushmen funerals.

The Enga are quite different. The maternal kin come in and break down houses and show their anger. And then people gather from all over, sometimes 200 or 300 people, and they wail and wail, sometimes for days. This is a sign of social support.

So I have seen kids who are 6 or 7 who don't even really know who died wail. It's contagious. It's like singing the national anthem or some song that you all love. It's absolutely contagious. People say if they don't even hardly know the person, they still are just caught up in the wailing. And that's a formal expression of the grief.

Dr. Jones: So there's this idea that compared to other animals and compared to the great apes, we are so social and we are social in large groups, and crying in one form or another is what often calls out and binds us together in a really wonderful and powerful way.

And we can't help it. I cry all the time and embarrass my son and my husband. I say, "Well, this is just me. I just cry." I just weep. But it's like you now know that I feel strongly about something and I don't have to tell you. I just start to cry, and they know, and they give me a support or they pat me on the back.

Well, I want to really thank you, Polly, for giving us an overview, our little glimpse into other cultures of how people cry, and wailing.

In the social domain about crying, we want to get some input from guys. Of course, women cry and for many reasons. I would say I cry a lot and my son usually comes out with something like, "Oh, Mom." And my husband comes over and he pats me on the shoulder.

We are going to get some input from the stars of the "Who Cares About Men's Health" podcast here on The Scope. Scot and Mitch are the stars. I guess Scot is the primary star and Mitch is the secondary star, but I think that, to me, they are all my little stars in the sky.

Dr. Jones: So, guys, crying can be a guy thing, but not always. I'm a boomer, and so my husband, I think I've seen him cry twice in the 50 years we've been together. Twice. But he comes from a non-crying family too. What do you do if you see your mom cry?

Scot: Oh, if you see your mom cry? Wow.

Mitch: My God. Okay.

Scot: Mitch, why don't you go ahead and start with that one?

Mitch: Mitch here. Millennial. So when my mother has cried in the past, there's an initial freeze response that I think is innate. I also was raised in a family that crying was not the most accepted thing. I think it was just from my parents' backgrounds. It's like, "Buck up and keep going." So whenever there was what I'll call an emotional spillover, there was often like, "Uh, what do I do?"

Scot: Deer in the headlight. Or if I don't move, maybe she won't notice I'm in the room.

Mitch: Yeah. T-Rex rules, right? Stay still, nothing will happen. But I also have a very close relationship with my mother. I would always be someone who she could talk to. I knew that a lot of times she just needed a little bit of reassurance and I would try my best to be that for her.

Dr. Jones: A verbal response, or did you respond with a physical response to this?

Mitch: It was almost always verbal. It was like, "Oh, what's wrong?" There would be maybe a hug or whatever at the end, but it was never like, "Oh, let me cuddle you or whatever while you tear up." That was always not our style.

Dr. Jones: We've been talking actually about the evolutionary fact that only humans do emotional crying. And it's probably an evolutionary response from when we were children to call out for help. It's a call for help. Although it's often used in sadness, but it can be used in frustration. So, Scot, you are a millennial sort of?

Scot: No, I'm Gen X.

Dr. Jones: Oh, okay. You're Gen X. And what do you do when your mother cries?

Scot: I never have seen my mom cry once in my life.

Mitch: Never?

Scot: Nope.

Mitch: Not even once?

Scot: Nope. Never saw my mom cry.

Mitch: Oh.

Scot: Yeah. Now if we want to change it to other people . . . So I haven't witnessed a lot of crying in my life. I have not. Western South Dakota ranch family. It wasn't that crying wasn't a rule, like, "You do not cry." That was never explicitly spoken. But I only saw my dad tear up once, and that was at my grandpa's funeral. Not even his dad. It was my mother's dad. I talked to him briefly at the end. He just felt like he saw the end of a generation coming. That's how he explained why that made him sad. But other than that, I haven't seen members of my family cry at all.

Dr. Jones: Wow.

Scot: Yeah.

Dr. Jones: Well, do you know any women that are close to you that you've seen cry?

Scot: Very few. Like I said, I've witnessed very little crying.

Dr. Jones: I should cry for you, Scot. I can cry on a cue. Somewhere in the studio, I'm going to start crying for sure.

Scot: Okay. All right. It'd be interesting to see how I'd react. I have seen some crying. I think I used to react like Mitch. I was very uncomfortable with it, but I think I'm uncomfortable with many shows of emotion other than maybe laughter or happiness.

I've kind of evolved a little bit. I just realize I try to be quiet I think and just let the person experience the moment the way they're experiencing it and then we generally end up talking. I can't remember if I maybe hug first. I had never thought of that until you just brought that up. I could see how that could be a first initial reaction. When somebody cries, you go up to them and give them a hug. Then you talk it out. Mitch is kind of the opposite. They talk it out and then do the hug.

But that's my story. That's my experience. Not a lot of crying.

Dr. Jones: Wow. Not a lot of crying in either of your lives. Okay. Well, now the next question is . . . I guess you've already sort of answered it, but let's go ask it. And that is, do you guys cry?

Scot: Well, that's a whole different story. I haven't seen a lot of crying, but I cry all the time. No, I don't. I really don't.

Mitch: I'm crying right now.

Scot: Right now, in case if you hear a little quiver in my voice, it sounds like I'm crying, I'm not. I just put an Altoid mint in before I put my mask on. So that's why my eyes are a little wet right now. It is not crying. I'm not crying.

Dr. Jones: It's mints or onions.

Scot: I've had different periods in my life where crying happens. So as a general rule, no, but there have been times in my life where it has happened.

There was one weird time in my life many years ago. I was driving to work and I saw bunny rabbits kind of chasing each other in a park and I just started bawling. I have no idea why that happened.

I know I had a time one time where there was a lot of stress going on in my life. We had just bought a new house and it was causing us some stress both financially and emotionally. We have since come to love the house. But I remember flashing back to a moment that my wife and I were kayaking and that was just a very happy memory from right before we kind of bought the house. I just was like, "I wish things could go back to that," and I started kind of welling up.

And then just recently, while I was listening to classical music to concentrate, this song came on and just out of nowhere, this song moved me so emotionally that I kind of started crying to it. Of course, I covered that one up because nobody wants to see a man ugly-cry in the library.

Mitch: Alone.

Scot: Yeah.

Dr. Jones: That's not ugly. That's just a little weep. Scot, you are evolving. I am so proud of you. You're becoming a big boy.

Scot: Oh, thank you. Yeah. I don't like it. Kidding. I'm joking.

Dr. Jones: No. It's often uncomfortable.

Scot: There's one other time. There was one other time that I could pretty consistently cry. If I'm watching a movie where the theme is a father figure is proud of . . . whether they're his actual sons or not, like "The Cowboys" by John Wayne, there are a couple scenes in there that get me. And then also when somebody believes in somebody else in a movie in a way that that person doesn't believe in themselves, and then that person succeeds, that will make me cry.

Dr. Jones: Wow. Scot, this is very impressive. Okay.

Scot: I need to add one more time.

Dr. Jones: Go for it. Yeah.

Scot: This is just like the "Who Cares About Men's Health" podcast. So you're getting a perfect sample of Scot talks a lot, Mitch doesn't talk as much and probably should talk more.

I also cried while I was practicing the speech I was going to give at my dad's funeral. So I wrote it, I got through all of that process, I had practiced it a couple of times, and then one time when I was practicing it, it just hit me and I cried. But I did not actually cry giving it. I guess I was in performance mode.

Dr. Jones: Okay. Well, Mitch?

Scot: Bear your soul to me, Mitch. I want to hear about your crying.

Mitch: I do it all the time these days. Growing up, my parents' background, I have a father who worked construction his whole life and a mother who grew up on a farm. And there's something about that kind of almost John Wayne, machismo-type background that any emotional spillover . . . I'll use that term again. Whether it be anger, sadness, whatever, it was often seen as . . . I wouldn't go as far as a moral failing, but just the fact that you have lost control.

I'm 33 this year and I think more than the first two decades of my life, any time I felt the need to cry or I finally did cry, it was often mixed with feelings of guilt, mixed with feelings of shame, this idea that, "Oh, why aren't you strong enough? Why can't you do this? You're weak. You're whatever."

Quick plug. Through the wonderful help I've gotten on the "Who Cares About Men's Health" podcast about changing my idea about what masculinity is, in the last year, I have kind of started my own mental health journey, working with professionals and working through some of the things that have happened in my life that have been really, really traumatic or hard.

And it is very strange that over the last year it is . . . Being okay with crying is new and it's hard. And I think that regardless of gender, if you have grown up in an environment that shames you for emotional outbreaks, of course, it's going to be hard to learn to be like that. And so these days, it's very heartening to hear Scot . . . Thanks for sharing when you've cried, because I'm finding myself doing the same thing lately.

I was moved by a book and it's like, "Oh, why am I sad? Why am I tearing up? I'm failing." But no. "No, no, no, Mitch. Quiet. You're not failing. You are just being human."

Dr. Jones: You're feeling. You're not failing. You're feeling.

Mitch: Right.

Scot: Yeah, and you might not necessarily be sad at that book, right?

Mitch: Yeah.

Scot: I think we can identify crying as that means "I am sad." But I think I just picked up on, as Dr. Jones saying earlier, you were emotionally moved by it. That's how it came out.

Mitch: Yeah. And it's not bad that I had that. It's not a loss of control, and learning that there are a lot of other emotions that you can feel too, and it's not emasculating.

Dr. Jones: No.

Mitch: And that's kind of a new feeling for me and something I'm exploring.

Dr. Jones: I think, yes, you are getting in touch with what it feels to be emotionally attached to things and a few tears are coming out. It's often uncomfortable in the sense of it's a physical feeling. It's a tightness in your throat. You'll see a man clear his throat. You can tell his throat is getting tight. You don't see the eyes tear up so much, but he just has to clear his throat a little bit because he's a millimeter away from crying.

Scot: So can we control when we cry or not, or is it totally just a bodily response like getting cold is? It's just a response to an environmental stimulus?

Dr. Jones: Oh, I think you can control it. The ability to control one's emotions means that, at some level, the adult in you is sensing what's happening and is making it okay or not okay to express it out in the society, out in public.

Clearly, there are sometimes when it's so horrific, people have no choice. There are people who faint. They see something horrific and they just pass out or they throw up. It's so emotionally difficult for them. But for crying, most of us can put a lid on it.

Scot: If we removed the social constraint and the pushing it down, are some people just genetically predisposed to cry more than others?

Dr. Jones: I don't know whether it's genetic. I think it may be social. So I grew up in a family where crying was not uncommon and all of us as four adults, the four of us, two boys, two girls, cry pretty regularly over sentimentality when we see something beautiful. So we practiced it when we were kids and it's something that was socially acceptable. So it's not genetic.

There are people who cry more. And for women, at least, there are times when people are emotionally vulnerable. People with PMS, right before women's periods, they may be more vulnerable to their emotions, less willing or able to put a lid on it. And women who are postpartum and women at perimenopause may feel like they are more emotionally vulnerable. And some women ride with it and some people ask for help.

Well, this has been an honor to hear both of you talk about your personal evolution to the "7 Domains of Crying". I'm moved. And I want to thank you both for helping me think about this.

Scot: Thank you.

Mitch: Thank you.

The Financial Domain of Crying

Let's talk about the financial domain. Of course, some people manage to crank out some tears for financial gain. Think about your teenager who really wants a new smartphone. But some people cry as a part of their job.

Dr. Jones: With us in the virtual Scope studio is the star of stage and screen, Carolyn Swift. Thanks for joining us, Carolyn.

Carolyn: Oh, it's my pleasure to be here.

Dr. Jones: Now, you've been an actress on stage and screen in the past. In fact, didn't you actually play at OB-GYN once?

Carolyn: Oh, my gosh.

Dr. Jones: Can you remember that?

Carolyn: Wow. Barely. That was a very long time ago.

Dr. Jones: I know.

Carolyn: Yes. I think it was "One Life to Live."

Dr. Jones: Did you cry on that episode, or it's too long ago you can't remember?

Carolyn: No, I was not supposed to cry.

Dr. Jones: Oh, okay. All right. So you had to hold back your tears as you were doing this emergency cesarean, I think it was. But can you talk about crying on cue?

Carolyn: It's easier than one thinks. In fact, I'm doing it right now with you. I'm relaxing the muscles around my eyes and softening my gaze. As I do that, I naturally tear up.

I used to think when I first began as an actor that in order to cry on stage, you had to think of something sad. It's called substitution. But that technique didn't hold out. It would always take me out of the moment rather than bring me into the moment.

And then I just found, on my own, if I simply relaxed the muscles around my eyes and . . . My mantra would be soft gaze. I would think soft gaze, and I would naturally start to cry. And then it would become a problem because I would think, "No, I don't want to cry right now."

Dr. Jones: Well, when I think about the physiology of crying, are there some actors that can't do it? Do female actors have an easier time with tears on cue than male actors? Or do you feel that this is just part of your training, whether you're male or female, and people just get to be good at it?

Carolyn: Oh, yeah. I don't think it has anything to do with maleness or femaleness. I've worked with actors who can . . . they're like faucets. And I've worked with actresses who don't have such an easy time with it. I don't think it has anything to do with cisgender, but more to do with understanding that those tears are always there.

As humans, there's sadness that's always going to be there. There's always something to weep about. The great relief in knowing that they're always there, they're inexhaustible, and then using the physical technique of just relaxing the muscles around the eyes brings up that inexhaustible well of grief that's there, whether we know it or not.

The Spiritual Domain of Crying

Dr. Jones: Carolyn, I hear you speaking from your current wisdom. And at this moment, I'm going to take us to the spiritual domain. Reverend Carolyn Swift Jones, you've retired from your career as an actor and now are an ordained minister for a congregation. And I can hear your wisdom of that as you now help people both virtually and in-person with their spiritual life.

How do people turn to their spiritual tradition when they get in tearful turmoil? Do you think it's helpful to be tearful as you begin to really tap into the part of you that's most deeply engaged in your living and in the spiritual world?

Carolyn: Oh, very much so. Crying is releasing, and releasing is healing. And crying softens our being. I think of crying as a remembrance. It's a return. It's, "Oh, that's right. I am so much more than my circumstances. I am so much more than my physical body. I am so much more than the story I have made up about myself." And you are so much more. It's a homecoming. It's coming back to the home of our being in which we realize what we always are eternally.

Crying softens the edges of our being and enables us to remember what we are. So crying is not only necessary for healing, but it is, I think, necessary for evolution.

Dr. Jones: I think the process of crying takes you out of the hamster wheel of your own repetitive thoughts. When you're weeping, it's really hard to be stuck on something. It really does open you up, I think, as you've described.

Carolyn: It's so important. Who doesn't feel good after a good cry?

Dr. Jones: Right. Well, what about tears of joy or ecstatic tears? I mean, I'd say sometimes I tear up because the world is just so beautiful.

Carolyn: In my vocabulary, I would say it's the same. It's tears of recognition, that there is a beautiful divine idea of beauty behind so many of our experiences on Planet Earth, the divine idea of love, the divine idea of beauty. We come into recognition of it and we realize that that which we are observing in the outer world that is so beautiful is true about ourselves at the same time.

I think we cry when we see there's something that stirs us in the outer world. We recognize, "I am that very thing. I am that very beauty that is causing in me a joyful feeling of recognition."

Dr. Jones: You're right. I mean, we are the only species that cries tears, emotional tears. Other animals don't do this. They cry out in pain or in distress, but they don't crank out tears. And it's probably because it's a way we recognize that whole important thing in each other is to show our tears.

Thank you, Carolyn. That was wonderful. I've got things to think about all afternoon.

Carolyn: Oh, thank you. It was such an honor. I just loved being here with you. Thank you.

Well, that's a wonderful way to round out our "7 Domains of Crying". We've talked with an anthropologist, we've talked to some guys about their tears, we've talked about how we evolve to cry, and we've talked about the very powerful spiritual connection that our tears bring us with others and really the divine.

This has been a great opportunity to talk about crying, but I just want to remind our listeners that if you want to hear more from the guys, you can listen to "Who Cares About Men's Health" anywhere you get your podcasts. And share with the men in your life and the women in your life, because they've been really great about talking about the men around them.

We're glad that you joined us. And you can join us and all of our podcasts wherever you get your podcasts by listening to the "7 Domains of Women's Health." You can also find us at womens7.com.

And I'll end with our "7 Domains of Crying" haiku.

Tears run down your face
No onions, no sharp cold wind
I open my arms