More than two billion adults eat chili pepper, and enjoy the stinging effect in their mouths, and that represents a kind of pleasant pain, that is, turning a usually negative experience into a positive one.
Chili pepper is one of the examples of "good masochism" that explains the enjoyment of negative experiences at first that the brain mistakenly interprets as a threat .. that perception that the body has been deceived, and that there is no real danger, leads to the pleasure derived from the authority of the "mind over the body", This is what we experience when watching violent and sad films, which is what drives it to break record viewership numbers.
Tears ... the steam of a burning heart
Scientists speculate to explain where tears come from and why humans have shed them since about 1500 B.C. They have believed for centuries that tears originate from the heart, and tears have been described as a byproduct when the heart weakens and turns into water.
The prevailing theory in the 17th century was that emotions - especially love - heat the heart, which generates water vapor, then heart steam rises to the head, condenses near the eyes and we shed it like tears, and finally, in 1662, the Danish scientist Niels Stensen discovered that the lacrimal gland is The source of tears, and considered tears just a way to keep the eyes moist.
Other theories persisted despite the lack of evidence, such as the idea promoted by biochemist William Fry in 1985 that crying removes toxic substances from the blood that build up in times of stress, until evidence has increased to support some of the more plausible new theories, one of which is that tears stimulate Social cohesion and human contact.
Crying in adults is more than just a symptom of sadness, as it may result from a range of emotions such as sympathy, surprise, and anger, and emotional tears are chemically different from those we shed while cutting onions, which may help explain why crying sends a strong emotional signal to others in Sometimes, not another, emotional tears contain more protein that makes emotional tears stickier, so they stick to the skin more strongly and run more slowly on the face, increasing the likelihood that they will be seen by others.
Crying while watching movies can improve mood for some people (pixels)
The magic of miserable arts
The popularity of the tragedy is still a confusing aspect of the human experience. We believe that sad music conveys miserable feelings to us, and yet we still listen to it, so why do we do that?
One possible answer to this question is that we might actually feel positive emotions when listening to it.
This suggestion may seem counterintuitive, so Tokyo University of the Arts researchers studied the potential emotional response to music in 2013, based on the hypothesis that perceived and perceived emotions may not actually match.
The respondents listened to sad musical pieces, and then chose between 62 words or phrases to classify emotions and their degree, and the results showed that sad music prompted the respondents to feel more romance, love and joy, and their tragic feelings declined, contrary to what they thought.
The matter differed slightly when studying the impact of depressing films, in his book "Why do humans only cry?"
Ad Wengeruts, a professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands and the world's leading expert on crying, presented the movie dilemma: When researchers show people a sad movie in the lab and then measure their moods immediately afterwards, those who cry are in a worse mood than those who don't.
The researchers repeated the experiment 90 minutes after the end of the movie and the crying people were calm, and the result was that those who cried after the movie became in a better mood than they were before the movie, which indicates that one of the most important factors is to give the positive effects of crying enough time, which supported the theory of "catharsis" .
In 2013, researchers led by Paul Rosen, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, published a paper on "benign masochism" and the love of watching bleak and bloody films and miserable novels. The most interesting finding was that crying is "more than just a vent." Experiencing sadness, and many of them take pleasure in crying.
More than 2 billion adults eat chili peppers, and enjoy the stinging effect in their mouths (Agencies)
Why do we cry over an imaginary hero?
Cognitively, we know that the story we watch on movie screens is fictional and the actors are paid to play on our emotions, and we really sympathize with them, and we cry for them, but what is the explanation for this result by researchers at Tilburg University that humans are more willing to provide support for people who cry More than those who do not cry and show real suffering?
The answer is the hormone oxytocin. In research published by the US National Library of Medicine, researchers showed an emotional video to a group of men and women, and it was proven that the level of oxytocin in the blood increased by 47% among those who caused the video their tears.
The researchers asked the participants to donate to a stranger who had been tortured, and those who cried - and had enough of the oxytocin hormone - showed great generosity, and they provided money through the default site for the study, and did not wait for a thank you in return, and when asked who would like to donate to the Red Cross or Children's Hospitals, submit Many of them, even those who have previously donated money to a stranger in the lab.
We can guess who responded the most to the emotional video, yes, the women released more oxytocin and were more sympathetic than the men, and gave twice the amount to charity.
Therefore, we may cry in movies because the oxytocin in the human brain is imperfectly tuned, so it does not differentiate between real humans and flashing images on the screen, both of which are sufficient to push oxytocin into high gear and drive our sympathy.