Talk:Crying/Archive 1

To do

Lots more to add to theories regarding function of crying. Evolution of the mechanism for emotional crying - what fitness advantage? helping behaviour from others? [1] User:Nk.sheridan 22:36, 12 May 2008

Move

This really belongs under crying since there are really not a single substantiated claim that animals weep. The links listed in the current disambiguation page are nowhere near as intuitive as this meaning. Peter ^Isotalo 10:19, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Yep, i'd agree with moving to crying. Nk.sheridan   Talk 18:55, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was Move. —Wknight94 (talk) 10:22, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Requested

Crying in humans → crying — The content of this article is primary meaning of the "crying". —Peter ^Isotalo 09:37, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Support per nom. Animals don't cry and other meanings are derivative. — AjaxSmack 06:30, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
• Support - per nom. Other animals not thought to cry (i.e. emotional crying). Nk.sheridan   Talk 17:13, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Crying in humans is clearly the primary meaning of "crying". Wilhelm meis (talk) 02:59, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Image

In reading the description of Image:Frenchman_weeps_as_the_French_troops_leave_Toulon,_June_1940.JPEG- it states "it is unsure if the scene was really shot on location or if it was later restaged in studios." I think an actual confirmed depiction of crying should be used in its place. I suggest, Image:Crying-girl.jpg, which is used in the tears article. Additionally, it shows tears from crying, where as the current picture does not. Cheers, AtaruMoroboshi (talk) 16:33, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I've changed it. Nk.sheridan   Talk 23:55, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Image [[2]] does not correctly depicts crying. It`s not obvious what the woman on the picture is doing. It need to be replaced with more appropriate image.109.93.166.7 (talk) 22:41, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Improvement

Hi, I've been working on an improved version in my userspace. Although, I've not done much recently! If any wants to assist or copy stuff from it please go ahead. It's here. I've also listed some useful articles that I've found here. Cheers, Nk.sheridan   Talk 00:03, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Happy

I wouldn't say that people either cry when sad or when "extremely happy," often people cry when they are "touched," which is a complex emotion hard to define but I would certainly say "touched" != "extremely happy." (That's "is not equal to" for those of you either not familiar with code or for you VB coders.)  ;) 66.235.43.182 (talk) 08:20, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I guess you're commenting on this addition "While crying is most often associated with negative emotions (such as sadness), many people may also cry when extremely happy (i.e. tears of joy)."

I'm not extremely happy with it either. Crying is defined as just a response to an emotional state. That state could be sadness, being "touched", happiness, frustration, pain, etc. I'll remove the addition. Nk.sheridan   Talk 21:12, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

i always thought that crying is a sign of weakness, while other times i think that not crying means unsencetive person, i never cried "sadly" infront of anyone, but the first time i ever cried infront of people was because of happiness ! :D
so i do really believe in jjoy tears :)
Black Named (talk) 08:09, 17 November 2008 (UTC)Black Named

I'm easily brought to tears by a feeling of insight brought on either by nostalgia or the beauty or universal applicability of some idea, sometimes triggered by movies, sometimes by regret for not seeing the idea much earlier. Nothing else does it, not pain, not frustration, not happiness, etc. I'm very embarrassed when it happens and do my best to hide it. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 08:28, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Study

A study of 300 adults? Is that really even useful? How can such a tiny, tiny study of a few hundred people be extrapolated to human beings as a whole? Does it really have a place in this article? 76.24.182.188 (talk) 04:24, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

A sample size of 300 is what you would require for statistic accuracy of 92.5%. --Dneyder (talk) 05:13, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

The sample size needed for accuracy is dependent on the size of a given population and the assurance that it was randomly assorted and assigned. Their is not magic number as far as I recall.

Travza (talk) 08:36, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I am uninformed on this, I haven't checked the study. But men cry once a month on average? This sounds unlikely to me SeldomSerious (talk) SeldomSerious

Why? Too often, too seldom? --Chricho ∀ (talk) 07:35, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Love the wordplay. In answer to your question, too often. Life's been pretty good but I can't imagine any year when I cried 12 times SeldomSerious (talk) SeldomSerious —Preceding undated comment added 23:19, 14 February 2011 (UTC).

Children

I noticed that both images are of children crying. Wouldn't it be more balanced to also show adults (and maybe also the elderly) crying? I know stereotypically young kids do it more, but it would be good to show a variety, since often adults cry for more complex reasons. Tyciol (talk) 18:39, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Function

The reference to the personal page of William H. Frey II leads to a site unrelated to his book. --Dneyder (talk) 04:59, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Some questions I would love to see answered.

Why does the face become flushed and irritated while crying?

Young children tend to cry "loudly" sobbing convulsively. They seem unable to cry silently. Adults have this ability. Is it an evolutionary trait? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.44.219.214 (talk) 15:20, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I have a question too. How come you feel like you have a lump in your throat when you have to cry? 199.34.4.20 (talk) 23:29, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Social rules/views on crying

Maybe I missed it but this article is lacking any mention of how different cultures view crying, in what circumstances they view it as acceptable, and how crying is treated differently typically in many cultures between men and women. For example, the view that "real men don't cry", once more prominently held, should be discussed. --Cab88 (talk) 22:25, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Need more on the neurophysiology of crying

...There is practically nothing, aside from this (unsubstantiated/uncited) sentence: "A neuronal connection between the lacrimal gland (tear duct) and the areas of the human brain involved with emotion was established." Precisely which "areas of the human brain involved with emotion" are these? And the connection "was established"--by whom, when, what study, etc.? We need either more precise information on the brain areas, or a citation so that readers can at least find out for themselves. Or, preferably, both. This is surely the most interesting, and inscrutable, aspect of crying. There are a lot of theories on it, none confirmed--the page should mention these. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.180.9.205 (talk) 23:52, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Crying without tears

According to the German Wikipedia it is possible to “weinen” without tears, then it is just a mien. How do you think about it? --Chricho (talk) 12:28, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

No opinions? I think, this is really an important article. --Chricho ∀ (talk) 22:14, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Cultural Causes of Crying?

In one of the subsections of the article it states, "There has been some evidence that crying between cultures also has some differences. In western countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, babies cry more often than infants in Eastern European countries. East Asian and Southeast Asian babies cry the most in the world, while African babies cry less than anywhere in the world. This is due to an intense amount of crying in the first three months after birth, with periods of crying peaking in the fifth week of age. It is unknown why this difference occurs culturally.[14]"

The thing that has me concerned is the idea of the crying early on causing the lack of crying later on. How on earth would one go about demonstrating a causal link for something like that? It is possible that their is a correlation, that crying starts out intense and then subsides, but whether or not causality has been demonstrated requires some rather crucial evidence. Sadly I cannot check the source cited either for it is a book. Travza (talk) 08:33, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

• I checked the source, there is nothing at that supports that claims that had been made in the entire book. Clovis Sangrail (talk) 03:13, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Biological Reason Behind Crying

The only thing this article talks about related to the process of crying is the fact that emotional tears are different substances than other tears. It does not mention any of the biological processes that trigger crying, or what the purpose of the different types of tears are. --MGualdoni (talk) 02:21, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

The Biological responses was a great addition to this article. It gives an understanding of crying in the form of anatomy. Very interesting. Jlloyd1122 (talk) 20:07, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Coming Improvements

I have started to read up about crying and hope to improve this article. I hope to add a new section that explains the biological process that takes place when an individual cries and explain the difference between positive emotion crying and negative crying. Also I hope to expand on the Function section and better explain what crying actually accomplishes. Those two sections will probably be the two that have a majority of the information I will add, but I will also probably add information in other sections when appropriate and possibly address some concerns listed here if I can find the right sources. One last improvement I hope to make is with the pictures in the article; four pictures of people crying seems a little redundant, so I am hoping to find a diagram that shows what happens in your body or in your brain when you cry. If anyone can help with any of this, or if someone happens to stumble upon a source that seems good that you don't feel like reading, passing it my way would be greatly appreciated!

Here is the list of sources I have right now that I will be using for this article. I am still looking for more, so let me know if anyone has any ideas.
Tel Aviv University. "Why Cry? Evolutionary Biologists Show Crying Can Strengthen Relationships." ScienceDaily, 7 Sep. 2009. Web. 1 Jul. 2011.
Katz, Jack. How Emotions Work. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1999. Print.
Lutz, Tom. Crying: the Natural and Cultural History of Tears. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Print.
--MGualdoni (talk) 23:32, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

File:Weeping Parisian from NARA Ww2-81.jpg Nominated for Deletion

An image used in this article, File:Weeping Parisian from NARA Ww2-81.jpg, has been nominated for deletion at Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Media without a source as of 12 August 2011 What should I do? Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so. If the image is non-free then you may need to upload it to Wikipedia (Commons does not allow fair use) If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale then it cannot be uploaded or used. This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 20:49, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

potential resource

Observations: Why do women cry? Obviously, it’s so they don’t get laid. by Christie Wilcox Scientific American September 16, 2011

99.181.147.68 (talk) 06:10, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Reasons for crying

I am no expert but I think "joy and pain" are two of the only motives for crying, maybe it would be good to put that somewhere in the article, better than saying only saying emotive states. "Tears of joy", "Tears of pain".--Halqh حَلَقَة הלכהሐላቃህ (talk) 18:35, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Better picture balance

The article right now has five pictures, four of them are photos, two of which are of newborn and two are related to political or social events related to war or ethnic cleansing. It doesn't seem balanced, there too much pictorial emphasis on baby crying and crying due to social or political reasons. Do we have other pictures to make it more balanced? Cogiati (talk) 23:23, 19 November 2012 (UTC)