Why do people cry? What is the meaning of crying? What evolutionary, biochemical and psychophysological process is hidden under crying?

WHY DO PEOPLE CRY? At first glance, the answer is obvious - because they are happy or, on the contrary, unhappy. But everything is more complicated. Crying is a natural emotional response to certain feelings, most often sadness and pain. “People often cry for other reasons,” says psychologist Stephen Sideroff. - For example, when they see something beautiful. A person seems to thaw: he stops defending himself and allows him to touch a place deep inside. It's a feeling of relief. This is how the energy is restored with the help of the senses. But that's just one reason people cry. Crying can be a coping mechanism, neuropsychologist Jodi DeLuca observes: "When we feel like crying, it indicates an important need." For example, it may mean that we are sorely lacking something or something too much. Or we’re just trying to get someone’s attention - this is what researchers call a “secondary benefit” from crying. Crying has a biochemical purpose. "It helps flush out stress hormones and toxins from the body," said Lauren Bylsma, who is researching crying at the University of South Florida at Tampa. Crying also has a social function: it is easier for a crying person to get the support of others. So tears become a means of manipulation - for example, with their help it is easier to get your partner to agree to a luxury vacation or to encourage children to finally improve their math grades.

Let it lie there.

Evidence is mounting in support of some new, more plausible theories. One is that tears trigger social bonding and human connection. While most other animals are born fully formed, humans come into the world vulnerable and physically unequipped to deal with anything on their own. Even though we get physically and emotionally more capable as we mature, grownups never quite age out of the occasional bout of helplessness. “Crying signals to yourself and other people that there’s some important problem that is at least temporarily beyond your ability to cope,” says Jonathan Rottenberg, an emotion researcher and professor of psychology at the University of South Florida. “It very much is an outgrowth of where crying comes from originally.”

Scientists have also found some evidence that emotional tears are chemically different from the ones people shed while chopping onions — which may help explain why crying sends such a strong emotional signal to others. In addition to the enzymes, lipids, metabolites and electrolytes that make up any tears, emotional tears contain more protein. One hypothesis is that this higher protein content makes emotional tears more viscous, so they stick to the skin more strongly and run down the face more slowly, making them more likely to be seen by others.

Tears also show others that we're vulnerable, and vulnerability is critical to human connection. “The same neuronal areas of the brain are activated by seeing someone emotionally aroused as being emotionally aroused oneself,” says Trimble, a professor emeritus at University College London. “There must have been some point in time, evolutionarily, when the tear became something that automatically set off empathy and compassion in another. Actually being able to cry emotionally, and being able to respond to that, is a very important part of being human. ”

A less heartwarming theory focuses on crying’s usefulness in manipulating others. “We learn early on that crying has this really powerful effect on other people,” Rottenberg says. “It can neutralize anger very powerfully,” which is part of the reason he thinks tears are so integral to fights between lovers — particularly when someone feels guilty and wants the other person’s forgiveness. “Adults like to think they're beyond that, but I think a lot of the same functions carry forth,” he says.

A small study in the journal Science that was widely cited — and widely hyped by the media — suggested that tears from women contained a substance that inhibited the sexual arousal of men. “I won’t pretend to be surprised that it generated all the wrong headlines,” says Noam Sobel, one of the study’s authors and a professor of neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Tears might be lowering sexual arousal — but the bigger story, he thinks, is that they might be reducing aggression, which the study didn’t look at. Men’s tears may well have the same effect. He and his group arecurrently wading through the 160-plus molecules in tears to see if there’s one responsible.

time.com

First of all, you need to understand that crying for a baby is the only way to tell parents that something is wrong with him. A newborn has a meager set of emotions, mostly negative, enough for him to notify adults about the current state. In turn, in adults, crying is a way to relieve stress, or a regressive unconscious appeal to parents for help. The child first learns to cry, choosing the most annoying sounds, to which parents respond more quickly.

In general, the essence of crying is precisely in the sound and here crying is not much different from a simple cry.

Tears have a purely applied value, they remove stress hormones such as prolactin. Accordingly, if the child does not cry for a long time, this is a deviation and the parents should contact a specialist.

At the expense of evolution, it is crying that it is known that other primates do not have it, but how it appeared in humans is only guesswork that I will not give it, because I do not consider this useful information. Elephants, seals, sea otters, crocodiles cry and there is information that some of them cry from grief, but first of all, this is a way of removing salt from the body.