How Crying Can Help You, Here Is What A Study Says

It may be good to cry out loud. (Photo: Getty Images)

They say that there's no sense in crying over spilled milk. But what do they know? Crying can get you another glass of milk if you do it loud enough. Plus, crying may serve a real physiologic purpose, according to a study published recently in Emotion, meaning the journal and not in an Emo-kind of way.

For the study, three researchers from the University of Queensland (Leah S. Sharman, Genevieve A. Dingle, and Eric J. Vanman) and one from Tilberg University (Ad J. J. M. Vingerhoets) recruited 197 female undergraduate students. They said that they choose all women rather than including men because pilot testing of sad videos had revealed that more women than men cried or at least more women revealed that they were crying. This did not account for the men who cried inside or used some bro-language or high fives to hide the crying.

The research team then showed each of the study participants either a video that are supposed to make them feel sad (sad videos) or a video that was not supposed to elicit any emotion (neutral videos) like something from a documentary or a ted talk. Each video lasted for close to 18 minutes. After the video, the researchers noted whether or not each participant had cried while watching the video. Ultimately, 65 participants watched the neutral video, 71 watched the sad video and cried during it, and 61 watched the sad video and did not cry. Presumably, no one cried during the neutral video. But then again, actor Bryce Dallas Howard was able to cry when Conan O'Brien talked about Home Depot in this Conan clip:

Then, each participant underwent a Cold Pressor Stress Test (CPT), which involved placing the participant's left hand, up to the wrist, in cold 0° to 5°C water. Unless you are the Iceman or Killer Frost, this is supposed to be painful. The research team measured how long each participant could stay in this position until pulling her hand out of the water. During the study, the research team continuously measured each participant's heart rate and respiratory rate and periodically measured cortisol levels from saliva samples. Cortisol is a stress-hormone that's produced by the body.

Also, at four points during the study, participants answered questions from the Positive and Negative Affect Scale short form (PANAS). These questions asked the degree to which the participant was experiencing ten different emotions and to rank each on a five-point scale that ranged from a one (very slightly or not at all) to a five (extremely).

When it came to cortisol levels and how long the participants could keep their hands submerged in the cold water, the study ended up finding not much difference between the neutral video watchers, the sad video non-criers, and the sad video criers. So if you are about to dunk yourself in cold water or take a cold shower, it may not help to cry first.

But here's a difference that the study found. Are you ready? Take a deep breath. The difference was breathing rates. While watching the videos, the non-criers tended to have elevations in their breathing rates, whereas, by contrast, the criers tended to maintain their initial breathing rates. In other words, tearing up could have helped participants better control their breathing rates. This provides further evidence that crying may help you better regulate arousal, serving as an emotional release.

Another interesting finding was that right before crying, participants tended to experience decreases in their heart rates, seemingly in anticipation of the crying. Once the crying began, their heart rates then tended to creep back up but not above where their heart rates had been before everything began. This may be further evidence that crying has a beneficial regulatory effect on your physiology.

So perhaps next time you start crying you can tell people that you are regulating your physiology. You've probably heard of people saying that they had a good cry and feel better after they've let the tears flow. It can be important to find reasonable ways to periodically release your emotions. Otherwise, you may end up bottling everything up like a hot air balloon that can explode when you least expect it.

Moreover, crying can be a way of communicating. It's really the only way that babies can express their needs before they learn how to say things like "why you throwing shade on me," or "I'm not Gucci." Crying can help communicate to others that you need more sympathy, comfort, or help. Of course, this can be misused. You don't want to cry every time your order at a restaurant doesn't come out right. And of course, there is the whole concept of crocodile tears: people crying to get something when they don't really mean it.

Crying can also be a way of communicating with yourself. Even when you cry alone, you may be telling yourself about your own state because, like many people, you could be terrible at reading your own emotions and situation. Tears could be your body's way of saying, "hey, take a break," or "something's not right," or "take care of yourself." Tearing up can then be a way of your body literally crying out to you.

Your body is a complex system. Crying can be complex. Your tears can flow when you are very sad, very angry, or even very happy. Better understanding what causes us to cry and what happens as a result could help us better handle our emotions and stress.

AI can help improve breast cancer risk predictions, study finds

Study says AI better at predicting cancer risk

A new study is showing yet another way artificial intelligence is entering the medical field — and potentially improving existing practices for predicting breast cancer risk.

The study, which was published Tuesday in Radiology, a peer-reviewed journal, found AI algorithms outperformed the standard clinical risk model for predicting the five-year risk for breast cancer.

Risk models like the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC) clinical risk score, which use self-reported and other patient information including age, family history and more, are typically used to calculate a woman's risk of breast cancer. 

"Clinical risk models depend on gathering information from different sources, which isn't always available or collected," lead researcher Dr. Vignesh A. Arasu, a research scientist and practicing radiologist at Kaiser Permanente Northern California, said in a news release. "Recent advances in AI deep learning provide us with the ability to extract hundreds to thousands of additional mammographic features."

In the retrospective study, thousands of mammograms were analyzed, and risk scores for breast cancer over a five-year period were generated by five AI algorithms. Those scores were then compared to each other and the BCSC clinical risk score.

"All five AI algorithms performed better than the BCSC risk model for predicting breast cancer risk at 0 to 5 years," Arasu said. "This strong predictive performance over the five-year period suggests AI is identifying both missed cancers and breast tissue features that help predict future cancer development."

While some institutions are already using AI to help detect cancer on mammograms, these findings suggest AI can be a vital tool in helping with a patient's future risk score — which takes seconds for AI to generate, according to the release. 

"AI for cancer risk prediction offers us the opportunity to individualize every woman's care, which isn't systematically available," Arasu said. "It's a tool that could help us provide personalized, precision medicine on a national level."

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Robots can help people be more 'creative' as long as they do this: study

A new study is suggesting that robots with more "charismatic" voices – as opposed to flat, matter-of-fact ones – can help people be more creative. 

Scientists from Denmark found that students who are given a task by a robot with a voice programmed to be more "engaging" and "inspiring" performed better.

These students were also more creative than students who received instructions from an identical robot with a flat voice, according to the findings from researchers in Denmark as published by Frontiers in Communication, a peer-reviewed, open-access science journal. 

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Increasingly, social robots are being used for support in educational settings, as SWNS, the British news service, noted.

But the Danish research team wanted to determine if the sounds emitted by a robot actually affected the students' performance.

Denmark-based researchers found that a robot with a "charismatic" voice can help people be more creative, as opposed to an identical robot with a flat voice, according to findings published in the journal Frontiers in Communication.  (SNWS)

While teamwork is a key factor in human creativity, boosting collaboration and new ideas, the researchers said they wanted to understand whether robots using a voice designed to sound charismatic would be more "successful" as creativity facilitators.

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Said Dr. Kerstin Fischer of the University of Southern Denmark, one of the study's authors, "We had a robot instruct teams of students in a creativity task. The robot either used a confident, passionate – i.e., charismatic – tone of voice or a normal, matter-of-fact tone of voice," as SNWS reported.

"When the robot spoke in a charismatic speaking style, students’ ideas were more original and more elaborate."

She went on, "We found that when the robot spoke in a charismatic speaking style, students’ ideas were more original and more elaborate."

Dr. Fischer and colleagues used a text-to-speech function engineered for characteristics associated with charismatic speaking, such as a specific pitch range and a certain way of stressing words. 

This robot was programmed with different voices to test creativity levels among students once they heard the different voices. (SWNS)

Two voices were developed – one charismatic and one less expressive, said SWNS.

The scientists recruited five classes of university students; the students were all taking courses that included an "element of team creativity," as SWNS noted.

A robot speaking on video "led" the workshop. 

Students were told they were testing a creativity workshop, which involved "brainstorming" ideas based on images and then using those ideas to come up with a new chocolate product.

A robot speaking on video "led" the workshop: It introduced the task, reassured the teams of students that there were no bad ideas – and then, afterward, congratulated them for completing the task. 

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It then asked them to fill out a self-evaluation survey, as SWNS noted.

The questionnaire evaluated the robot’s performance, the students’ own views on how their teamwork went – and the success of the session.

Scientists have found that students given a task by a robot with a voice programmed to be "engaging" and "inspiring" performed better. The findings were published in the journal Frontiers in Communication.  (SWNS)

Creativity levels of each session were measured by the number of original ideas produced and by how elaborate they were; the researchers measured them as well. 

The group that heard the "charismatic" voice rated the robot more positively, finding it more interactive.

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Their perception of their teamwork was also more positive and they produced more original and elaborate ideas. 

"Our study provides clear evidence for the effect of charismatic speech on listener creativity."

They also rated their teamwork more highly.

But the group that heard the non-charismatic voice perceived themselves as more resilient and efficient, possibly because a less charismatic leader led to better organization by the team members themselves, although they produced fewer ideas.

Study co-author Dr. Oliver Niebuhr, also of the University of Southern Denmark, said, "I had suspected that charismatic speech has very important effects, but our study provides clear evidence for the effect of charismatic speech on listener creativity," as SWNS reported of his remarks.

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"This is the first time that such a link between charismatic voices, artificial speakers and creativity outputs has been found," he also said.

Although the sessions with the robot's charismatic voice were generally more successful, not all the teams responded identically to the different voices. The researchers acknowledged that previous experiences in the students' different classes may have affected their response.

"We would expect that the same stimuli will not yield the same results in all languages and cultures."

The scientists said that bigger studies are needed to understand how external factors affected team performance.

Added Dr. Fischer, "The robot was present only in videos, but one could suspect that more exposure or repeated exposure to the charismatic speaking style would have even stronger effects," as SWNS reported.

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She also said, "We have only varied a few features between the two robot conditions. We don't know how the effect size would change if other or more features were varied."

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"Finally, since charismatic speaking patterns differ between cultures, we would expect that the same stimuli will not yield the same results in all languages and cultures," Dr. Fischer also said, as SWNS reported.

Maureen Mackey is managing editor of lifestyle for Fox News Digital.