I'm not crying, you are

I cry when I’m moved. Anything can set me off – an advert, a story on social, a film. I don’t tend to cry twice at the same thing; however, the ending of the film Eurovision particularly moves me. When Fire Saga perform ‘My Home Town’, I am always brought to tears. I’m not ashamed of this; in fact, I quite like having little control over my emotions. A great story evokes an emotional reaction.

But why do we cry?

Research has distinguished five subgroups of emotional tears:

• Tears in response to physical pain
• When someone or something dies
• Empathetic pain – when someone you love is struggling
• Societal tears – sometimes called “ritual weeping”
• Art-elicited tears – when we are “moved”

(Denckla et al., 2014; Vingerhoets, 2013)

And although there is a lot more research to be done into why we cry, there is evidence that emotional tears are chemically different from the ones we shed when cutting onions (reflex tears). The former contain more proteins which some believe are so that they run down the face slower, encouraging social support (Frey, 1985).

Frey speculated that crying flushed out all the chemicals that are present when experiencing strong feelings, whereas Darwin saw them as a “purposeless, incidental result” (Darwin, 1872, p.175).

I prefer Jonathan Rottenberg’s belief that “Crying signals to yourself and other people that there’s some important problem that is at least temporarily beyond your ability to cope” (cited in Oaklander, 2016).

Whatever the reason, watching a piece of content that makes you cry can be separated from other types of tears because you’re actually prepared to buy a ticket to experience them.

We all love a good cry

Crying is a response by the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which is used to relax our bodies. Research has found that crying releases oxytocin and endorphins, which both have a role in easing emotional pain, which is why we may feel better after shedding some emotional tears. Crying has a cathartic effect (Frey, 1985; Frijda, 1986).

If our body is getting a boost from oxytocin and endorphins, we will associate this mood with whatever the content is focusing on – be it the film, the product, or the brand.

Fight or flight

Crying, however, is not an isolated incident. Before you experience tears, you get “chills”, your heart speeds up, your breathing slows, your voice breaks, and you often feel a lump in your throat. This is your sympathetic nervous system (SNS) kicking in (the fight or flight), and many of us experience some of these effects before art-elicited crying.

Some studies have shown that when the SNS is paralysed, patients cried more, and when vital PNS nerves are damaged, and they cried less (Macleod, 2021; Walter, 2006). Some theories suggest that we cry to pull us back to an even level after our fight or flight kicks in (Bratskeir, 2020).

One idea is that crying stops the body from overloading the heart:

But are the two connected?

Through a study on the connection between goosebumps (caused by the SNS) and crying (caused by the PNS), we can understand more about what brings us to art-elicited tears when we are moved. Publishing in Frontiers in Psychology, a group of German researchers questioned whether emotional tears (PNS) and emotional piloerection (goosebumps) could overlap (SNS) (Wassiliwizky et al., 2017). The recovery hypothesis is that tears will always come after goosebumps (as the recovery response). They studied students’ reactions to films that induced emotional tears. They recorded goosebumps (SNS) and lacrimation/tears (PNS) during the experiment.

Why is this important?

This was a helpful study as it shed light on how prolonged exposure to something that triggered our SNS could be used when creating content. The group found that the SNS and the PNS could overlap (almost 60% of the clips that made the students cry included goosebumps that overlapped with tears), and when they did, the emotional arousal was higher than that of “just goosebumps” or “just lacrimation”. So we can conclude that when both happen simultaneously, the effect on the audience is more powerful. As content creators, we want to encourage tears and goosebumps to overlap.

But how do we do that?

What is most interesting for us is that the study also found patterns within the content viewed by the students, so a model for creating content that causes emotional tears could be built.

Tear-eliciting clips tended to have closer shots of the character.

Tear-eliciting clips used more eye-level/straight-on views than high and low-angle perspectives.

When it came to lighting, the key light was high, which detailed the facial emotional cues but then went to low key light to highlight the “gloom”.

An interaction was contained in 93.66% of the clips, whether this was interaction with a human, animal, or alien. Just the main characters were included in 45% of the clips; however, in the clips with other characters, 52.11% contained five bystanders or more. And there’s a theory that bystanders are used to “mirror” emotions and prime the audience (Bastiaansen 2009).

The study focused on distinguishing whether clips used a musical score outside of the story or music within the story world. The researchers found that tear-eliciting music did better if it consisted of music or songs outside of the story, or characters depicted singing within the story.

Putting this to the test

So, we return to Eurovision, and to ‘Husavik (My Hometown)’. And ask the following questions.

Do we see close-up shots of the key characters?

Is the camera angle straight on?

Do we see the emotions highlighted through lighting, and then the lighting becomes moodier?

Is there social interaction?

Are we primed to mirror the bystanders’ emotions?

Does a key character sing?

I’d answer yes to each of these questions. Although the study had several limitations we would be happy to conclude that the model above would help to produce a piece of work that would emotionally move your audience. However, don’t take this for granted – look at a bit of work that has impacted you and work out if the same rules apply.

Author: Daniel Spencer