Why do we cry? - Big Questions - (Ep. 202) | Mental Floss

Hi, I'm Craig and this is Mental Floss on YouTube

Today I'm going to answer Brianna Stanhope's big question, why do people cry

Well Brianna, you're in luck because crying is what I know best. Let's get started

This is a complicated question because people cry for tons of reasons, like babies need to cry because they're babies

Adults sometimes cry when they're happy or sad, or they have an eyelash caught in their eye, or Charlie from Lost Tide or something

So let's just stick to why people cry when they're emotional for the sake of this episode

So first let's talk about the actual physical act of crying. Though it may seem like a reflex, there's a part of the brain that controls it

The amygdala notes the emotions, then sends the signal to the hypothalamus, which alerts the sympathetic nervous system

And then... here come the vapors. That's the same nervous system connected to fight or flight, which is why other functions happen when we cry, like an increased heart rate

Another thing that gets alerted is the lacrimal gland, which can be found between the eyelid and the eyeball

When something emotional happens, your brain sends a signal, then the lacrimal gland makes a tear, which causes you to blink

Then the tear either runs down your cheek or gets drained into something known as the lacrimal punctum

The name of my high school band. So this is a human response that evolved which means it probably has some benefits and experts have figured out a few Like emotional tears actually contain leucine and kephalin a natural painkiller So lick those tears And that kind of explains why we cry It actually makes us feel better which you may have personally experienced after a good cry

Don't lick other people's tears, like lick your own. Some experts also believe that crying evolved as a social cue to indicate that something

is wrong. People tend to be sympathetic towards a person who is crying, so it has a social benefit

Love me. Come on guys. Love me. I try really hard on these videos

This would have particularly helped before humans developed a language, because crying indicated that someone was hurt or needed help

Experts also considered gender differences when hypothesizing about why people cry. According to a couple studies from the past few decades, women cry more than men

One study from the 80s found that on average, men cried 1.3 times a month

I guess I'm above average. And women cried 5.3 times. And this accounted for every type of crying, including moist eyes

So yeah, it counts. Your eyes were watering at the end of the movie Inside Out, fellas

You were crying. You were crying. There are probably a few reasons why men cry less than women

Some of it might be biological, like testosterone may interfere making men less likely to cry

There are also environmental factors. Women and men cry similar amounts, on average, in countries that frown upon emotional expression

Thank you