If you cry with happiness at weddings you are responding to a happy experience with a negative reaction, researchers claim.
And they believe the unusual reaction may help restore emotional equilibrium in us and keep intense emotions under control.
Experts
say that their work helps to shed light on how people express and
control their emotions, which could help advance their understanding of
people’s mental health.
Oriana
Aragon, the Yale psychologist who led the study, set out to explore the
phrase ‘tears of joy,’ which she said never made sense to her.
But
after conducting a series of studies into seemingly incongruous
expressions, she now understands better why people cry when they are
happy.
‘People may be restoring emotional equilibrium with these expressions,’ she explained.
‘They
seem to take place when people are overwhelmed with strong positive
emotions and people who do this seem to recover better from those strong
emotions.’
The
report, which is published in the journal Psychological Science, cites
various examples of responding to a positive experience with a negative
emotion, such as: a crying spouse being reunited with a soldier
returning from war and teenage girls scream at a Justin Bieber concert.
The study citesvarious examples of
responding to a positive experience with a negative emotion, such as a
crying spouse being reunited with a soldier returning from war, and when
people can't help pinching babies' cheeks (stock image) who they
consider cute
WHY TEARS OF JOY ARE BENEFICIAL
The
study found that responding to a happy experience with a negative
reaction, may help restore a person’s emotional equilibrium.
In this way it helps people manage extremely emotional, overwhelming, moments.
People who cry with happiness are able to moderate intense emotions more quickly.
Examples
also include a baseball player who hits a home run, only to be slapped
on the back by teammates and when people can't help pinching babies’
cheeks who they consider cute.
Dr
Aragon and her colleagues ran study participants through some of these
scenarios and measured their responses to cute babies or happy reunions.
They
discovered that individuals who express negative reactions to positive
news were able to moderate intense emotions more quickly.
They
found that people who are most likely to cry at their child’s
graduation are most likely to want to pinch a cute baby’s cheeks.
There is also some evidence that strong negative feelings may provoke positive expressions.
The study revealed that individuals
who express negative reactions to positive news - shown here by a happy
woman crying after voting in the first election since former President
Mohamed Morsi was ousted in Egypt - were able to moderate intense
emotions more quickly
For
example, nervous laughter often occurs when people are confronted with a
difficult or frightening situations, and psychologists have seen people
smiling during times of extreme sadness.
These new discoveries begin to explain common things that many people do but don’t even understand themselves, Dr Aragon said.
‘These
insights advance our understanding of how people express and control
their emotions, which is importantly related to mental and physical
health, the quality of relationships with others, and even how well
people work together,’ she said.
Source: Dailymail
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