Recently, while discussing how we experience and express strong emotions, one of my students described her strong, lifelong tendency to cry when she feels anger, and the pressure she feels from her family to hold back those tears and speak clearly without her voice cracking. Restraining the crying expression is a challenge she still faces despite immense effort.
This made me realize how little we discuss the functional bio-psycho-social role of crying for humans. It begs the question: Why do humans, uniquely among all animals, possess and often utilize the ability to cry under the pressure of intense—both unpleasant and pleasant—emotions?
Photo by Nikolay Hristov on Unsplash
A couple of the main theories suggest that crying primarily serves as:
- A Social Signal: Crying functions as a signal of distress and a request for empathy and care. This social interaction often promotes increased bonding when an observer responds with understanding to the crier’s vulnerability.
- A Self-Regulatory Action: Crying is viewed as a self-soothing mechanism where the body attempts to manage the overwhelming eruption of intense emotion. This action aims to restore homeostasis by rebalancing the autonomic nervous system and related neurochemical levels. Though the crier may be initially overwhelmed, the crying can release internal pressure, allowing the body to slightly calm down so the person can better think and consider how to respond.
For a person like this student, whose body is wired to feel intensely and has a strong ‘cry-to-rebalance’ response, these theories provide an explanation for the quandary she experiences and why crying is so difficult to control. Her social environment has not been responding helpfully to her body’s signal for empathy, thus limiting the effectiveness of the social function. However, the strong biological need for emotional release remains, and her body insists on crying to quickly restore homeostasis. In other words, if it were possible, trying to stop crying could help her socially in those moments, but it would be hard on her body biologically.
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