Crying

Crying is a non-specific emotional expression, which is associated with the facial expressions and often, but not always, accompanied by lacrimation. Crying is not tied to a particular emotion, but is, for example, often in pain, sadness, fear, anger or joy before.

Etymology

The verb cry for ' whine tearfully ' is derived from the Old High German weinōn to 800 from. In Middle High German it was to cry, WENEN. Originally, the word originated as an interjection from the Germanic * wai ( hurt ), comparable to vaitóti ' ( hurt ) complain, moan, groan, moan ' from vernacular Vai, vai ' hurt (s) ', ie ' hurt cry '. The adjective whiny, which means ' to cry tending miserably afflicted ', was extended along the lines of pathetic, ridiculous from the Middle High German wine (s) Lich ' crying miserably afflicted ' beginning of the 16th century. In the literary language was weepy by Lessing as a translation from the same major French-speaking larmoyant usual.

Causes and features

As an archetypal expression of the crying is understood by all people, because it allows the parties in conjunction with the accompanying facial expression, a unique assignment of behavior. The wines can also be an expression pronounced joy ( tears of joy ) or a reaction to violent laughter. Frequently, however, is crying expression of pain, sadness, helplessness, fear, or feeling deeply hurt and injustice.

Why do people cry, is controversial in research. Since Charles Darwin, one of the first, took this theme, two theoretical perspectives are mainly controversial, however, do not have to be mutually exclusive necessarily: The crying as a form of communication and social interaction, ie of social behavior, and the wines as a protective reaction of the body and the psyche, which is the stress and tension reduction, or more generally of better handling especially emotional impressions. For both theories, there are plausible arguments, but conflicting studies and studies that are often based on subjective feelings of those affected. These take their own wines and its effect on their own psyche and the external effects of their crying differently true. So felt, contrary to the commonly held view, the majority of people surveyed her crying not as a relief. The purely physiological explanation, the tears flow serves to flood foreign bodies from the eye or toxins from the body, little importance is attached, unless it is understood in a figurative sense. Christian Ohrloff, spokesman for the DOG and director of the University Eye Clinic in Frankfurt am Main, criticized after a surveillance study in 2009 that the previously available studies had been mostly descriptive and unsystematic.

An American study in 2011 showed that the crying of an infant or young child 's ability to concentrate an adult more affected than, for example, corresponding to loud machinery noises.

Composition

By crying tears produced differ in their chemical composition of tears, which were produced to moisten the eyeball, and contain significantly larger amounts of the hormones prolactin, adrenocorticotropic hormone, and Leu -enkephalin and the elements potassium and manganese.