Nearly all of us cry sometimes. But what makes us cry, how often we do it, and how it makes us feel varies hugely from person to person. According to
Jonathan Rottenberg and colleagues, crying in general, and particularly how crying makes us feel, are surprisingly under-researched aspects of human behaviour.
Rottenberg's team asked 196 adult Dutch women (aged between 17 and 84 years) to answer questions about their personalities, their mental health, their propensity for crying and how crying made them feel.
Consistent with past research, people who reported being more neurotic, extravert and/or empathic tended to cry more often and more easily. The research was correlational, so it's not clear if having these personality types leads to more crying, or if crying more contributes to these personality types. Perhaps surprisingly, mental health, in terms of reported depression, anxiety and so forth, was not associated with how often or easily people said they cried.
When it came to the effects of crying, the pattern was the other way round. Aspects of personality were not associated with how the participants said crying made them feel, but mental health was. While the majority of the participants (88.8 per cent) said that crying brought them relief, a minority, especially those with depression, anxiety, anhedonia (a loss of the ability to experience pleasure), and/or alexithymia (a difficulty expressing or processing emotions), said that crying left them feeling worse or just the same.
The researchers said more work was needed to find out why crying brings relief to some people but not others. "Currently there is only anecdotal evidence that learning how to cry and how to derive positive effects from it could help people who are having difficulty expressing sadness or crying," they wrote.
译文:
哭有何用？
几乎我们每个人都会有哭泣的时候。但是，是什么让我们哭泣？我们多久哭泣一次？以及它如何让我们感觉人与人之间有很大的不同。依乔纳森蛾与他的同僚之见，一般意义上的哭，尤其是哭泣使我们感觉如何，是人类行为中一个亟待研究的方面。
乔纳森蛾的研究小组提问了196名荷兰成人妇女（年龄介于17岁和84岁之间），询问有关她们的个性，她们的心理健康，她们是否爱哭，以及哭泣使她们感觉如何。
与过去的研究结果一致的是，被认为是神经过敏的，外向的，以及/或者移情的人往往会更频繁更容易哭泣。这项研究是相关的，因此，目前尚未清楚的是：有这些性格是否就会导致更多的哭泣，或者更多的哭泣是否有助于这些性格的形成。也许令人惊讶的是，就所谓的抑郁，焦虑等情感而言，心理健康与人们所说的他们如何频繁地或者容易地哭泣是没有联系的。
说到哭泣的影响，结果是反过来的。性格方面与参与者所说的哭泣使他们感觉如何是没有联系的，而心理健康方面却与之有联系。绝大多数的参与者（88.8％）认为哭泣给他们带来放松，然而一小部分人，特别是那些抑郁，焦虑，缺乏快感（丧失体验快乐的能力），和/或有述情障碍（难以表达或处理情感）的人，认为哭泣会让他们心情更糟糕或者没有任何的改变。
研究人员表明，要找出哭泣为什么能减轻某些人而不是其他人的痛苦的原因还需要开展更多的研究工作。他们写道：“目前，只有轶事的证据表明，学会如何哭泣以及如何从哭泣中得到积极的效果可以帮助那些难以表达悲伤或不会哭泣的人们。”