Positive emotions have different impacts on mood and sympathetic changes in crying from negative emotions

Abstract

Emotional crying has been extensively discussed but has concentrated on crying as a result of negative emotion. There are few psychological and neurophysiological findings on the effect of positive emotion on crying. In this study, participants watched four videos (two positive and two negative) evoking different emotions. We investigated whether emotional crying differed in mood and physiological response. Changes in electrodermal activity, high-frequency components of heart rate variability, and the Profile of Mood States were measured as indicators of mood, parasympathetic, and sympathetic nerve activity. Those who cried showed no significant increase in parasympathetic activity compared to those who did not, regardless of the emotion. However, in negative emotion, crying was found to be significantly positively associated with depression and sympathetic nerve activity. In contrast, positive emotion, crying was positively and significantly associated with vigor, but not with sympathetic nervous activity. These results suggest that crying due to positive and negative emotions may be derived from different psychophysiological mechanisms.