A new study from psychologists at Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences in Krems, Austria, found that crying actually involves a much more complex palette of emotional responses.
Emotional crying in adults is a familiar, uniquely human behavior. But psychologists have known little about how crying affects our mood outside of artificial lab settings.
Previous studies often relied on retrospective surveys or laboratory experiments. The university team decided to study crying in everyday life instead. The researchers used an event-based sampling method, recording crying episodes immediately after they happened, in natural settings. That approach reduced the measurement error that comes with recalled questionnaires.
The team found that crying generally did not improve people’s well-being. The short-term emotional impact of crying varied depending on its cause.
The results, published by UCP in the journal Collabra: Psychology, showed that crying is not a single, uniform emotional reaction; its short-term effects depend on the situation.
Crying, captured in real time
In a four-week study, 106 adults — women and men — took part. They recorded every detail of their crying episodes, including the cause, duration, and intensity. They also reported their emotional state immediately after crying and again at 15, 30, and 60 minutes. In total, the team analyzed 315 episodes recorded right after they happened, plus additional episodes that participants logged in end-of-day reports.
“Our goal was to study crying where and when it actually happens — in everyday life. Using smartphones, we were able to record crying episodes in real time and then track emotional changes over the following hour. This allowed us to measure those changes far more precisely than with retrospective reports or lab studies,” said Professor Stefan Stieger, head of the Department of Psychological Methodology.
Crying isn’t a simple mood fix
The data painted a mixed picture. Participants’ crying was linked to fewer positive emotions and more negative ones.
After crying, participants felt less inspired and more downcast. More intense crying produced stronger emotional effects. The biggest hit to psychological well-being came from crying tied to loneliness or despair. Tears triggered by media content produced a less negative reaction. Some effects faded quickly, while others lasted up to an hour. By the next day, almost no one still showed any trace of those effects.
The study found that women cried more often than men, and that women’s crying episodes were longer and more intense. The causes of tears also differed: women were more likely to sob because of loneliness, while men more often cried in response to feelings of helplessness or in response to media reports.
How people felt after crying depended mainly on the situation that triggered the tears. “The study showed that crying should not be seen as an automatic path to relief. Its emotional effects depend heavily on the context in which it occurs,” explained Hanna Graf, the study’s senior co-author.
The team’s work challenges the common belief that crying usually brings relief. Instead, crying is part of a more complex emotional process.
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