Why do we cry when we are sad?
JOHNSON
Carmel Secondary School
Humans are a social species, and it is very important for an individual to express his feelings to fellow individuals.
Laughing and crying are expressions of very basic emotions - happiness/joy/contentment and pain/sadness/confusion/anger. An individual can get help and comfort by sharing his pain or sadness with another person.
Humans are very strongly oriented towards vision and sound, and most of our communication is based on vision and hearing - using facial expressions and other body movements together with speech and other sounds. Laughing and crying are both types of communication which use these forms of expression.
Babies laugh and cry without being taught how to do so. Even new- born babies use crying to show they are unhappy, long before they are capable of anything else. These actions simply evolved as the most adequate means for humans to express these basic emotions. Early humans most certainly laughed and cried, as did our ancestors and so do chimpanzees.
