Being a crybaby is easy to figure out, but crying is more of a mystery as we age
Q. Young Henry VIII of England, once seen as a charismatic king, was later described as a petty, cruel and capricious tyrant. How might scientists today explain such a dramatic change? A. According to Arash Salardini of Yale School of Medicine and colleagues, “hard knocks from jousting, hawking and horseback riding may have left Henry VIII with traumatic brain injuries that muddled his thinking,” says Laura Sanders in “Science News” magazine, drawing from the “Journal of Clinical Neuroscience.” The monarch’s memory problems, explosive anger and headaches could be explained by hard jousting knocks and a fall into a soggy ditch that left him dazed and unable to speak for two hours.
Though other ailments such as syphilis and diabetes have been advanced to account for Henry’s erratic behavior, Salardini suggests that “traumatic brain injury seems to make the most sense.” Q. Just how astute are you at detecting BS when it comes your way? A. The Oxford English Dictionary defines BS as “nonsense,” but whatever you call it — “hooey,” “drivel,” “baloney,” “balderdash,” “blather” — it’s not the same as lying,” says Michael Shermer in “Scientific American” magazine, drawing on philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s book on the subject. “It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing BS requires no such conviction.”
Psychologist Gordon Pennycook and colleagues set out to test the hypothesis that higher intelligence and superior analytical ability “lead to a greater capacity to detect or reject pretentious BS.” They drew on the New Age Bullshit Generator for meaningless statements, such as “We are in the midst of a self-aware blossoming of being that will align us with the nexus itself” and “Today, science tells us that the essence of nature is joy.” In four studies of over 800 subjects, those measured to be more intelligent and analytical were less likely to rate such statements as profound. Revealingly, those most receptive to “pseudoprofound BS” were also more prone to conspiratorial ideas and paranormal beliefs, among others. Q. Why cry? A. Crying actually encompasses two very different processes: vocal wailing and tearing, says Sonia van Gilder Cooke in “New Scientist” magazine. Human babies are great at wailing because it’s a very effective way of grabbing the attention of caregivers. Yet interestingly, for the first couple of weeks human babies don’t shed tears because their tear glands haven’t yet developed. Over time, a baby’s crying becomes less vocal and more tearful, perhaps for sound evolutionary reasons: Wailing advertises vulnerability to everyone around, including predators. Thus, “once a child can move around, it is wiser to use the covert signal of tears.”
Also, crying changes throughout our lives. Around adolescence, crying over physical pain is replaced with crying over emotional pain. “Many people also start to evidence moral crying, in reaction to acts of bravery, self-sacrifice, and altruism. Why we do this is still a mystery.”
Another mystery is why we increasingly shed tears over things that are positive. One theory is that “tears of joy” do not so much reflect unalloyed happiness but are rather bittersweet, as events like weddings and holidays “remind us of the passage of time and mortality. This may be why children usually do not cry out of happiness; they don’t yet make the association with sacrifice, loss and impermanence.”