Researchers find out why we cry for joy

If you burst into tears during the happiest times of your life, that’s okay. Researchers from Yale University (Connecticut, United States) have just explained the phenomenon behind tears of joy. The results of their study will be published in the journal Psychological Science.

Exalted footballers, cute babies …
In fact, the mechanism, so far unknown, is quite simple. “It kicks in when a person is overwhelmed by extremely powerful positive emotions,” explains psychologist Oriana Aragon, who led the study. This allows him to find an emotional balance and to recover more easily from the emotion ”. Because as positive as they are, these situations shake the brain which seeks by all means to return to a stable state.

The study lists a whole host of situations in which a person can develop negative emotions in response to a positive experience. A grieving wife reunites with her husband who has just returned from the war. A teenage girl screams when Justin Bieber appears on stage – and footballers do the same when they score a goal. Another characteristic case: when seeing a baby “so cute that words can hardly describe him”, some develop this strange reflex of pinching his cheeks.

The authors placed the study subjects in intense positive situations. They noticed that those who reacted negatively to happy information managed to regulate their emotions more quickly than others. They also noted that people who cry at their children’s graduation ceremonies are more likely to pinch the cheeks of cute babies.

Nervous laughter and sad smiles
Conversely, very negative emotions can provoke positive expressions, according to the same mechanism of return to balance. Thus, embarrassment or dread can elicit nervous laughter. During the study, some subjects responded to an intense feeling of sadness with a smile. “These results provide a better understanding of how people express and control their emotions,” says Oriana Aragon.