Watch and weep
Do sad movies make you cry? Scientists go behind the tears and tell you why
Why do we cry at the movies?
Maybe it is the movie or the psychological baggage we brought in with us. Or is it empathy or you-are-so-busted guilt? Maybe, genetics or cultural conditioning. Or were we simply bursting to spill that night because the boss refused to give us a week off?
This much we do know: All of us do it in varying degrees of blubbitude.
Culturally factual
And in our dinner discussions, the cultural myths (and facts) tumble out: Women cry more than men. Women go out of their way to find “chick flick'' cry-athons.
But what about the women who guffawed derisively through Steel Magnolias or the men who wailed like babies at Spock's screen demise?
Researching the psychophysiology of crying in the early 1980s, biochemist William Frey subjected almost 150 people to various tearjerkers.
In Crying: The Mystery of Tears, Frey and co-author Muriel Langseth concluded that boys and girls do equal amounts of crying until puberty.
But later, women cry more than men — four times as much, he found, and usually between 7 and 10 at night. He also discovered that crying releases internal toxins, a sort of purgative action. What makes them cry, Frey believes, is empathy.
But Tom Lutz, a sociologist and author of Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears, dismisses Frey's crying-as-auto-therapy as cultural myth.
“If crying were therapy,'' he says drily, “actors who cry onstage every night and twice on Sunday would be the most psychologically healthy people in our culture and we know that's not true.''
What really triggers the waterworks, Lutz says, is a combination of conflicted emotions.
We strum a mental guitar chord that combines positive, major feelings with sadder, minor tones.
But whatever we are doing, we certainly are forging a personal bond with a particular movie that we'll never lose.
Waterworks
- There are three kinds of tears:
Basal: The tears that keep the eyes moist. Without them, blinking would feel like sandpaper scratching our eyes. We produce between five and ten ounces a day.
Reflex: The tears that come from cutting onions, or with a finger in the eye.
Emotional: The tears we unload when watching Old Yeller. They are the only tears that dispel toxins. - Women produce 60 per cent more prolactin — the same hormone used in breast-feeding — in their tears than men.
- Crying is hard in space — gravity issues.
- British psychologist John Sloboda concluded that the most tear-inducing musical passage of all time is the beginning of the third movement in Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony.
- Humans are the only animals known to cry, not counting Walt Disney cartoons.
- Tears contain mucous, water and oil.
- Our noses run when crying because tears drain into the lachrymal ducts inside our eyes and into the nasal cavity.
Moved by a movie? Here are some of your reactions
Yes, I do cry at the movies. Some themes and topics are very moving or sad and I just can't help it. Before having my own kids I never used to be as affected. But after [that], I'm much more sensitive about many more things. I do feel better after [crying]! It's good not to have to bottled up emotions, even though it is just a film.
Bonnie Scott-Laws
British
Movies do make me cry. However, if the movie is annoyingly sad, I just get up and leave. It's OK if it's meaningfully sad. I cry because I feel for the person or situation in question, not because I want to release my emotions. Also, I don't carry the emotions with me for long after, thoughsome scenes and dialogues live on.
Smita Bhat
Indian
Yes, I do cry at movies when they are sad and especially if it's based on a true story. But if it's not a true story, I try to be strong and tell myself that it's only a movie.I do feel better after I cry.
Mayoli Guerra
Mexican
Most men don't cry at movies. It's embarrassing to walk out of a movie theatre drenched in tears. Even if I drop a tear, I'll let my eye absorb it rather than be seen crying.
Andrew Ngure
Kenyan
