When you experience happiness that brings you to tears of joy the body is attempting to balance your extreme emotions, according to a new study.
Researchers from Oriana Aragon of Yale University were curious as to why people act negatively about a positive thing such as laughing when you're nervous or pinching a cute baby. Volunteers were shown pictures of babies - some of whom had more classically cute features (think big eyes and round faces) than others.
The study was confirmed when the researcher's findings were compared with an online version of the study.
"People may be restoring emotional equilibrium with these expressions," Oriana Aragon, the lead researcher and a psychological scientist, said of the study to Psychological Science. "They seem to take place when people are overwhelmed with strong positive emotions, and people who do this seem to recover better from those strong emotions."
The data showed that the more overwhelmed a person is by a happy emotion the more negative the response is. This new found information will be able to help psychologists better understand these emotions that their patients may be experiencing.
"These insights advance our understanding of how people express and control their emotions, which is importantly related to mental and physical health, the quality of relationships with others, and even how well people work together," Aragon said.
Aragon published a new paper this week on the phenomenon in Psychological Science along with Margaret S. Clark, Rebecca L. Dyer and John A. Bargh.
