Glossary // Glossary term Empirical

Crying

Emotional tearing, often accompanied by vocal and respiratory changes, typically in response to loss, helplessness or being moved. Retrospective survey data suggest that people more often report feeling better after crying when they receive social support and when the situation that prompted it is resolved or understood. Whether crying itself has a self-soothing physiological function remains debated, and the evidence is mixed.

Where the site uses it

Crying, talking and sharing: when emotional expression helps
Evidence on crying, social sharing of emotion, talking about distressing experiences and affect labelling shows that expression helps through social support, meaning and regulation rather than through discharge itself.

Studies behind it

The works the definition rests on, with the level of evidence each was appraised at.

Bylsma, L. M., Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M., & Rottenberg, J. (2008). When is crying cathartic? An international study. doi:10.1521/jscp.2008.27.10.1165

Level D Cross-sectional study

Supports the claim that social support, resolution and new understanding were associated with reports of cathartic crying, and shame and suppression with fewer. Retrospective self-report in student samples.
Gračanin, A., Bylsma, L. M., & Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M. (2014). Is crying a self-soothing behavior?. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00502

Level D Review

Supports the claim that findings on mood after crying appear discrepant and that self-soothing and social-soothing mechanisms have been proposed. Proposes mechanisms rather than establishing them.