Heavy the sorrow that bows the
head
When love is alive and
hope is dead. --W. S. Gilbert, H.M.S. Pinafore
Morgan finally broke down and admitted the truth:
She'd been pregnant with his baby. Shell-shocked, Ridge asked where their child
was now. You could hear a pin drop as Morgan finally confessed amid broken sobs,
"I had an abortion." --Bold and Beautiful (Soap Opera Digest, May
2, 2000, p. 25)
Rhythmic vocalization. 1. A
sobbing vocal exhalation, ranging from soft-to-loud, given as a visceral
response to grief, happiness, sadness, or pain.
2. An involuntary tightening of the voice box (or larynx) and pharyngeal
muscles, usually accompanied by a quivering chin, depressed lip
corners, puckered brows, flared nostrils, tearing eyes, facial
flushing, shoulder-shrugs, and forward bowing
motions of the head and torso (note the similarities to laughing).
Usage I: To cry is human (but see below, Animals). Fragments
of the cry face--esp. its a. quivering chin (mentalis
muscle) and b. depressed lip corners (depressor anguli
oris)--suggest sadness or disappointment. (N.B.:
The above muscles, which are difficult to contract at will, are exceptionally
accurate indicators of mood; the slightest disappointment, e.g., shows in
slightly down-turned lips. Electromyographic studies show "fairly continuous
activity" in mentalis [Gray's Anatomy (1995:795], reflecting the link
between the mentalis and emotion.) The first felt (i.e., afferent) sign of crying is contraction of the throat
muscles.
Usage II: A happy cry averages two minutes; a sad cry,
seven (Ralston 1998:99).
Animals. Trumpeting, shrill cries, and
tears were exhibited by a herd of elephants as they apparently mourned the death
of seven of their fellows who had been killed by a train. The accident occurred
on November 15, 2001 in India's state of Assam. "'About a hundred elephants were
circling the pachyderms that lay dead near the railway tracks, with tears
rolling down their eyes,' said Khagen Sangmai, a top official of the Digboi
police station" (Newman 2001).
Infancy. Use of the vocal cords comes shortly after birth in the act of crying. (N.B.: Crying signals that a newborn's lungs are functional, and that its umbilical cord may be severed with a knife.) A baby's rhythmic attention cry and shrieking pain cry are easily distinguished. (N.B.: The typical rising-then-falling pitch of the former resembles an ancient mammalian pattern of maintaining contact with mother by means of a separation call.)
Media. 1. The Italian opera most likely to bring audiences to tears is "Pagliacci," first performed in 1892. The clown character, Pagliaccio, who smiles on the outside as he cries on the inside, often wears a painted teardrop on his cheek. 2. "'Thousands of songs have been composed about tears; almost every movie worth remembering stimulates their flow,' says Jeffrey Cottler, Ph.D., professor of counseling at Texas Tech University, and author of The Language of Tears (Jossey-Bass, 1996)" (Ralston 1998:96).
Observations. Women cry five times more frequently than men (and average five crying spells a month). Women's tears also flow more than men's (which usually well up in the eyes rather than stream down the face like women's tears). The average length of a crying spell is one to two minutes. Sadness, followed by anger, sympathy, and fear are the reasons most adults give for crying.
Tears. Humans are the only animals positively known to cry emotional tears of sadness and joy, though the vocal cries, whines, and whimpers of young mammals are similarly used to solicit aid from mothers. People report feeling better after a cry, according to a study by University of Minnesota biochemist, William Frey. Frey discovered the neurotransmitters leucine-enkephalin (an endorphin or natural opiate-like substance for pain relief) and prolactin (released from the pituitary in response to emotional stress) in emotional tears; the substances were not found in tears shed in response to sliced onions. (N.B.: Tears may help the body alleviate stress and cleanse itself of toxins, as do other exocrine processes such as sweat, urine, and exhaled air.)
RESEARCH REPORTS: 1. The most exhaustive nonverbal research on crying is by Charles Darwin (1872; see also the comments by Paul Ekman in Darwin's volume). 2. The crying complex is present in newborns as the birth cry (McGraw 1943:16). 3. In nursery school children (after attack by classmates) weeping is "usually preceded by puckering the brows and reddening of the face," followed by immobility, thumb-sucking, and rocking back and forth (Blurton Jones 1967:355-56). 4. Blind-and-deaf-born children weep in anger (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1971:12). 5. The child's cry face resembles the ape's "frustration-sadness," "whimper," and "cry" face (Chevalier-Skolnikoff 1973:80). 6. "The results [of studies of 46 !Kung San Bushman infants] support the concept that the early peak pattern [of crying] is not specific to infants in western industrialized societies, and may represent a behavior universal to the human species" (Barr 1990:608). 7. "The reflexlike links between perceiving and producing calls, and the emotional states associated with them, are made evident by the 'infectiousness' of some of our own species' innate calls, specifically laughter and crying" (Deacon 1997:236).
Neuro-notes. 1. Babies born without brain
structures above the amphibian
midbrain (i.e., anencephalic infants) can still cry.
2. A lonely infant's separation call cries deeply from the
thalamocingulate division of the mammalian
brain. (N.B.: The call's rising-then-falling pitch
may form the basic intonation pattern of all human sentences, which normally
begin on an ascending, and end on a descending, note.) 3. In
the tearing (i.e., lacrimation) reflex, irritating tactile or chemical
stimuli carried by the opthalmic division of the trigeminal nerve (cranial V)
spread via interneuronal paleocircuits a. to parasympathetic
cells (see REST-AND-DIGEST) of the superior salivatory
center of the facial nerve (cranial VII), and b. to the
spinal cord's superior cervical sympathetic ganglion (see FIGHT-OR-FLIGHT). Nonverbally, as an efferent
cue, tearing impulses pass through parasympathetic and sympathetic
fibers to stimulate secretions of the lacrimal glands. 4. In emotional
tearing, feelings from higher, limbic-brain centers reach the parasympathetic
nucleus of the trigeminal nerve and stimulate the lacrimal glands to release
their viscous fluids.
See also FLASHBULB
EYES, TONE OF VOICE, YAWN.
Copyright 1998 - 2016 (David B. Givens/Center for Nonverbal Studies)
Vintage photo of pouting flower girl (copyright 1955, Museum of Modern Art, New York [from the Museum's classic book, The Family of Man])