Yale University psychologist Oriana Aragon didn’t quite understand the meaning of phrases like “tears of joy” or “tears of happiness.” However, after conducting various studies on such seemingly contradictory expressions, she has been able to understand why many people cry when they are happy.
It’s about “restoring emotional balance with those reactions,” says Aragon in his research , which will be published in Psychological Science . “They seem to occur when people feel overwhelmed by strongly positive emotions, and in this way they better recover tranquility and emotional stability.”
There are many examples of negative sentimental reactions to respond to positive experiences: the wife who cries when her military husband returns from the front; teenage girls who cry out in tears at a Justin Bieber concert; hysterical footballers when they score a decisive goal. Likewise, many people cannot resist twisting the cheeks of a particularly handsome baby or giving someone a hug so hard that it hurts.
Aragon was surprised that no one wondered about these kinds of reactions. So, together with their Yale colleagues, they brought these situations up to groups of volunteers and measured their reactions to seeing cute babies or having a happy and joyous gathering. What they found is that individuals who reacted negatively to positive news were better able to moderate strong emotions more quickly and re-established balance sooner.
They also found evidence of the opposite situations . In other words, sometimes negative feelings provoke positive expressions. For example, the nervous laughter that is unleashed in some people when faced with difficult or disturbing situations. Or the smile that sometimes appears in a situation of extreme sadness. Aragon believes that knowing our responses in these types of situations “can help us understand the way in which individuals react and control their emotions, which is key for mental and physical health, for the quality of relationships with others and for to be able to collaborate better ”.
