Induced crying

[guitarplayer]

I am aware of studies (do not have them handy) of the effects of induced expression of smiling on people. Subjects are asked to keep a pencil between their teeth which induces a smile-like face expression. Later there are some statistically significant differences if it comes to positive mood factors for these subjects vs control.

Anyone came across similar studies wrt crying? I would theorize that crying is a mechanism of tension release, so perhaps people would be more relaxed after crying. It came to my mind as I was chopping onions today.

[ertyu]

Anecdotally, I chop onions on a regular basis because I like them. Crying from onion doesn't release tension for me

[guitarplayer]

It seems like not much research went into it

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl ... $=activity

and I suspect it will remain an underdeveloped topic as I struggle to see revenue generation + it does not associate well.

Compare to the disaster and success anecdote from Barabasi in his introduction to 'The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success'

We started with disaster, backhandedly landing on success. At the time, my lab was analyzing cell phone data to understand how people react to major catastrophes. Recognizing that this was a good opportunity for one to learn by doing, I assigned Dashun Wang, a gregarious, Chinese-born Ph.D. student, to help with the ongoing project. The endeavor resulted in a truly fascinating paper, one that I was certain would have a major impact on disaster relief efforts worldwide.

Except . . . no one else thought so. Try as we might, we couldn’t get it published. The highest-tier and then some of the lowest tier journals rejected it. We joked that we should have removed the word “disaster” from the title, since that likely destined it for failure.

'The Formula', Barabasi's book on success, is a bestseller.