Background: This study aimed to determine whether patient-reported outcome measures after an average of six sessions of haptotherapy in approximately three months differ per indication for patients’ five most frequent self-reported indications. Method: From 1 April 2023 to 1 April 2024, 72 healthcare haptotherapists invited new patients aged 18 years or older to participate in this research. Participants completed a digital questionnaire at home, once at the start of the therapy and once three months after the beginning. The digital questionnaire comprised sociodemographic questions, the Haptotherapeutic Well-being Questionnaire, the Scale of Body Connection, the Four-Dimensional Symptom Questionnaire, and the Pain Catastrophizing Scale. Results: The first questionnaire was completed by 772 patients, of which 550 were included and categorized into five groups, which were compiled based on the five most frequent self-reported indications for haptotherapy. These indications were (1) stress- or tension-related complaints or burnout complaints (33.9%), (2) request for help concerning personal development (14.5%), (3) fear complaints (8.7%), (4) persistent physical complaints (7.5%) and (5) traumatic experiences (6.6%). Of the patients in the five most frequent self-reported indications groups who completed the first questionnaire before the start of the therapy, 329 (59.8%) completed the second questionnaire after three months of therapy and these were used for analysis. There were no significant differences between the five indication groups concerning the mean T1-T2 sum scores of well-being, body awareness, distress, depression, fear and somatization. Conclusion: The trend in all indication groups was the same: after an average of six sessions of haptotherapy in approximately three months, participants experienced a statistically significant and clinically relevant increase in well-being and body awareness and reduction of mental health complaints. To confirm this trend, it is necessary to conduct adequate haptotherapy-evaluation research with a long-term follow-up. Keywords: Haptotherapy, Indications for Haptotherapy, Patient Reported Outcome Measures, PROMs.

Nostalgia is a social, self-relevant, and bittersweet (although mostly positive) emotion that arises when reflecting on fond past memories and serves key psychological functions. The majority of evidence concerning the prevalence, triggers, and functions of nostalgia has been amassed in samples from a handful of largely Western cultures. If nostalgia is a fundamental psychological resource, it should perform similar functions across cultures, although its operational dynamics may be shaped by culture. This study (N = 2,606) examined dispositional nostalgia, self-reported triggers of nostalgia, and functions of experimentally induced nostalgia in young adults across 28 countries and a special administrative region of China (i.e., Hong Kong). Results indicated that nostalgia is frequently experienced across cultures, albeit better valued in more-developed countries (i.e., higher national wealth and life-expectancy). Nostalgia is triggered by psychological threats (especially in warmer countries), sensory stimuli (especially in more-developed countries), and social gatherings (especially in less-developed countries). The positive or negative affect prompted by experimentally induced nostalgia varied by country, but was mild overall. More importantly, recalling a nostalgic (vs. ordinary) memory increased social connectedness, self-continuity, and meaning in life across cultures. In less-developed countries, recalling an ordinary memory also conferred some of these functions, reducing the effect size of nostalgia. Finally, recalling a nostalgic (vs. ordinary) memory augmented state satisfaction with life in countries with lower quality of living (i.e., lower life-expectancy and life-satisfaction). Overall, findings confirm the relevance of nostalgia across a wide range of cultures and indicate cultural nuances in its functioning.

This study compared the characteristics of 150 songs (Dutch lyrics, N = 47, English lyrics, N = 103), popular at Dutch funerals, to an equal number of non-funeral songs. The variables explored included those linked with the music (valence, energy, danceability, acousticness, key, and tempo); and lyrics, namely: linguistics-related (first-person singular/plural, second-person pronouns; past, present, future tense; expressed emotion (positive, negative words, and the discrete emotional categories anger, anxiety, sadness); and category words (those relating to family, friends, death, religion). Funeral music was lower in valence, energy, and danceability and higher in acousticness than non-funeral music. Furthermore, English funeral music lyrics contained more second-person pronouns and were more future-focused than comparison songs. Funeral lyrics were not particularly negative, but English texts contained more words relating to sadness. In conclusion, funeral music differs in severable notable respects from general popular songs that may reflect the special purpose of this music.

Music forms an integral and essential part of funeral rituals worldwide, but has to date received little systematic research attention. Recent investigations into funeral music used in the Netherlands showed that it is lower in tempo and valence, less energetic, and more acoustic than popular music. Funeral music is also often in a major mode. The present study sought to replicate these findings for a Dutch (NL) funeral music sample and to expand upon previous knowledge by investigating the audio features provided by Spotify, namely: valence, energy, tempo, acousticness, instrumentalness, mode, and danceability for funeral music samples from Croatia (HR) and the United Kingdom (UK). First, values of music characteristics for funeral music used in HR, N = 388 pieces, NL, N = 500 pieces, and UK, N = 439 pieces, were compared to values of popular control music from each country separately. Previous findings were replicated: for HR, NL, and UK, funeral music displayed a similar pattern as described above. Second, the values of Spotify audio features for funeral music were compared between countries. Analyses revealed significant differences between NL/UK and HR, namely lower valence and energy and higher acousticness (only HR-UK) and instrumentalness for NL/UK compared to HR. Effect sizes were, however, small and are likely due to differences in music selections. These results suggest that, even though there is much diversity in music pieces and songs, funeral music within and across these European countries is more alike than different in terms of its audio characteristics.

Only humans produce emotional tears, a fact that has been linked to triggering empathy, social bonding, and providing support in observers. Consequently, either the tears themselves play a crucial role in eliciting such behavior, or, alternatively, the negative context in which they are shed is responsible for these observers’ reactions. The present study investigates whether the context in which we see an individual cry influences our perception of tears. We exposed participants (N = 13) to compound stimuli of faces with or without tears, combined with positive, negative, and scrambled backgrounds, while their brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Findings reveal that the lateral occipital gyrus responds to the presence of tears but that the contextual information does not influence this reaction; furthermore, tears appear to facilitate interpreting emotional facial expressions when combined with a positive context. These findings indicate that tears are a robust, unambiguous signal, the perception of which is insensitive to context but can still contribute to the context interpretation. This feature sets tears apart from other facial emotional expressions. This is likely due to their crucial evolutionary role as one of the foremost indicators of discomfort, signaling a need for help and their power to forge a bond between people.

Human emotional weeping, or crying, occurs in response to a wide array of antecedents. Although music is often mentioned specifically as a stimulus that may make individuals cry, few studies have systematically explored the characteristics of these crying episodes. The present study examines crying over music. Participants ( N = 2778; 1716 women) completed a survey asking about the last time they cried while listening to music, their associated emotions and physical experiences, details of the song they were listening to, time of day, presence of others, and the overall experience of the crying episode itself. Crying over music appears to be relatively common and occurs mainly when the person is alone during the afternoon and evening. Participants cried over a wide variety of songs, and they attributed their crying to sad memories, nostalgia, the music itself, and the lyrics. They often experienced being moved, sadness, powerlessness, and nostalgia while crying over music. These findings are discussed in the context of music listening and how they compare with the findings of research on crying in general.

People cry for various reasons and in numerous situations, some involving highly moral aspects such as altruism or moral beauty. At the same time, criers have been found to be evaluated as more morally upright—they are perceived as more honest, reliable, and sincere than non-criers. The current project provides a first comprehensive investigation to test whether this perception is adequate. Across six studies sampling Dutch, Indian, and British adults (N = 2325), we explored the relationship between self-reported crying proneness and moral judgments and behavior, employing self-report measures and actual behavior assessments. Across all studies, we observed positive correlations of crying proneness with moral judgments (r = .27 [.17, .38]) and prosocial behavioral tendencies and behaviors (r = .20 [.12, .28]). These associations held in three (moral judgment) or two (prosocial tendencies and behaviors) out of five studies when controlling for other important variables. Thus, the current project provides first evidence that crying is related to moral evaluation and behavior, and we discuss its importance for the literature on human emotional crying.

Emotional tears have been proposed to serve as a signal of distress, appeasement, and helplessness, which promotes prosocial responses in observers. They may also facilitate the perception of sadness. A still unanswered question is what information tears convey about emotional states when they are combined with different muscular facial expressions. The current study evaluated three hypotheses: Tears facilitate inferences about (a) emotion intensity in general (b) sadness in particular, or (c) helplessness-related appraisal and behavioral intentions. In the first experiment, participants viewed pictures of (non)tearful real and artificial faces displaying anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and neutral state. They had to report which of the seven expressions they recognized, and to rate its intensity, sincerity, and felt empathy. Tears appeared to facilitate the perception of sadness, but also of anger and fear, while they decreased the perception of disgust and surprise. The ratings of the intensity, the perceived sincerity, and the experienced empathy followed a similar pattern. In the second experiment, participants had to indicate if briefly (50 ms) presented (non)tearful faces showed a particular expression, and we measured their accuracy and reaction times. The results of the first experiment were not corroborated. Overall, the findings lend most support to the appraisal/behavioral intentions hypothesis and less support for the intensity and the sadness enhancement hypotheses.

Tearful crying is a ubiquitous and likely uniquely human phenomenon. Scholars have argued that emotional tears serve an attachment function: Tears are thought to act as a social glue by evoking social support intentions. Initial experimental studies supported this proposition across several methodologies, but these were conducted almost exclusively on participants from North America and Europe, resulting in limited generalizability. This project examined the tears-social support intentions effect and possible mediating and moderating variables in a fully pre-registered study across 7,007 participants (24,886 ratings) and 41 countries spanning all populated continents. Participants were presented with four pictures out of 100 possible targets with or without digitally-added tears. We confirmed the main prediction that seeing a tearful individual elicits the intention to support, d = .49 [.43, .55]. Our data suggest that this effect could be mediated by perceiving the crying target as warmer and more helpless, feeling more connected, as well as feeling more empathic concern for the crier, but not by an increase in personal distress of the observer. The effect was moderated by the situational valence, identifying the target as part of one’s group, and trait empathic concern. A neutral situation, high trait empathic concern, and low identification increased the effect. We observed high heterogeneity across countries that was, via split-half validation, best explained by country-level GDP per capita and subjective well-being with stronger effects for higher-scoring countries. These findings suggest that tears can function as social glue, providing one possible explanation why emotional crying persists into adulthood.

Background This study’s main aim was to understand better why patients cry during a haptotherapy treatment and whether crying is considered helpful. Method During a period of 4 weeks, Dutch haptotherapists asked all their patients aged 18 and older to complete a digital questionnaire at home after the end of the haptotherapy treatment. Patients were asked about their indication for haptotherapy, and they answered six questions about crying during therapy on a 5-point Likert scale (1-5). In addition, the participating haptotherapists were asked (1) whether they ever had tears in their eyes during therapy, (2) whether they had ever actually cried during therapy, and (3) whether they considered the patient’s crying as helpful for the therapeutic process. Results Seventy-two participating haptotherapists recruited 640 participants, 500 women and 140 men. The respondents’ average age was 46 years. The six most common indications (n > 30) were burnout complaints, stress complaints, personality development, depressive complaints, anxiety complaints, and comorbidity. During the haptotherapy treatments, 80.9 % (n = 518) of the patients reportedly had cried during therapy. Women cried significantly more often than men (t(638) = 7,922, p = .017). Crying during treatment did not differ between patient groups (F(5, 436) = .317, p = .903). Of the patients, 26.1 % (n = 167) indicated that they cried to let others know they were suffering, and 88.1 % (n = 564) because their crying had a relieving effect. The patient’s crying was perceived as meaningful by most patients (98.6 % (n = 631)) and therapists (62.5 % (n = 45)). As many as 43.1 % of the participating patients reported changes in general crying, with 27.3 % reporting an increase in their crying and 15.8 % a reduction. Conclusion Patient crying occurs relatively often during haptotherapy, as it does during other therapies. Most patients consider this as meaningful. The different patient diagnoses, the different educational backgrounds of the haptotherapists, and the sociodemographic differences did not influence patient crying. To further understand the effective mechanisms of haptotherapy, it is recommended to investigate why some patients cry more after haptotherapy and others cry less and how they experience their change in crying frequency.

Abstract Aim Reward sensitivity affects individuals’ motivation to engage in goal-directed behavior. Other concepts, critical for reward appraisal, that potentially influence activity participation encompass delay discounting and anhedonia. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that anhedonia and delay discounting influence the relationship between reward sensitivity and activity engagement. Methods In total, 37 inpatient patients with an alcohol use disorder (AUD) and 37 matched healthy controls completed the behavioral activation system scale (BAS scale), the Pleasant Activities List (PAL), the Snaith–Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS) and the Delay Discounting Task (DDT). Results Patients differed from controls on SHAPS, DDT-k, PAL substance-related activities (SRA), but not BAS and PAL non-substance-related activities (non-SRA). Correlational analyses revealed a strong correlation between BAS and PAL non-SRA in both patients (r = 0.53) and controls (r = 0.47), but also with PAL-SRA in patients (r = 0.40), although not controls (r = 0.09). BAS was negatively correlated with SHAPS in both groups and with DDT in controls. SHAPS was negatively linked to PAL non-SRA in both groups. The BAS-PAL non-SRA relationship was influenced by discount rates in controls. Conclusion A strong link exists between reward sensitivity and engagement in non-SRA in both groups. Delay discounting affects the reward sensitivity and non-SRA association in healthy controls, while anhedonia did not impact the association between reward sensitivity and engagement in (non-)SRA in both conditions.

The goal of this clinical practice review is to assess the current state of the theoretical and empirical literature on emotional crying (i.e., crying in response to an emotional stimulus), a topic that has received surprisingly limited attention of behavioral scientists and clinicians. Although the empirical research on emotional crying remains in a nascent state, we draw upon the existing scientific knowledge to provide preliminary suggestions for clinicians on how to interpret and respond to crying in clinical contexts. We also identify research gaps and provide recommendations for further research to improve our understanding of this intriguing and still poorly understood human behavior. We suggest that a better understanding of individual differences in crying behavior and the postulated intraindividual and interindividual functions of crying is of critical importance for clinicians, given its frequent occurrence and notable associations with emotional and social functioning. An improved characterization of this important phenomenon will lead to improvements in clinical assessment, treatment planning, and psychotherapy interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The Community Reinforcement Approach Happiness Scale (CRA-HS) is widely used for assessing the quality of life in addiction treatment, but the amount of research on the psychometric properties has been scant. The present study sought to (a) test for measurement invariance of the CRA-HS across college students (n = 3388) in five countries (i.e., United States., Spain, Argentina, Uruguay, and the Netherlands); (b) evaluate differences on the CRA-HS (i.e., latent mean differences) as a function of sex and country, and (c) compare criterion-related validity. Using multi-group confirmatory factor analyses, we found a shortened 10-item version of the CRA-HS to be invariant across sex, but only configural and metric invariance was found across countries. Across all countries, criterion-related validity of the CRA-HS scores across different countries emerged. Our findings serve as a foundation for future cross-cultural work testing models in which subjective well-being (i.e., happiness) is an important clinical/routine outcome among college students.

Crying is a uniquely human behavior, the functions of which are at present not completely understood. We hypothesized that tears promote the perception of morally relevant traits and states such as sincerity, honesty, and remorse, which facilitate social bonding and we, therefore, predicted that tears would reduce the punishments proposed for transgressors. Participants were exposed to photographs of tearful people and the same pictures with the tears digitally removed, together with brief descriptions of everyday transgressions (Study 1, N = 71) and crimes (Study 2; N = 359). The dependent variables were the judgment of the model's emotionality (Study 1), sincerity (situational in Study 1 and trait in Study 2), and kindness, remorse, and proposed punishment (Study 2 only). As expected, models with visible tears were rated as more emotional and reliable and were also judged as kinder and more remorseful than tearless transgressors. However, the more positive perception of tearful transgressors only translated into more lenient punishment in the case of drunk driving. In conclusion, although tears make transgressors appear more sincere, reliable, kind and remorseful, they do not necessarily affect proposed punishments for the transgression.

Emotional tears are uniquely human and play an essential role in the communication of distress in adults. Several studies have shown that individuals are more willing to offer emotional support and help a person in tears. Preliminary evidence suggests that this greater willingness to provide support is mediated via perceived warmth and helplessness. Moreover, tearful individuals are regarded as more reliable and honest. In the current study, we examined whether people can reliably distinguish genuine and fake crying, and what the consequences for the further evaluation of the crier are. A total of 202 participants (73 men, 129 women) were exposed to brief movie clips of genuine and fake crying adults and were asked to assess the criers. Results show that women were slightly better at identifying fake and genuine crying. How the crying was perceived subsequently seemed to have a strong influence on the further evaluation of the "crier." Criers qualified as pretenders were perceived as significantly more manipulative, less reliable, less warm, and less competent. Further, the respondents felt less connected with the perceived pretenders, who also were less welcomed as friends, colleagues, neighbors, and babysitter. They were additionally qualified as significantly less fit for "reliable" professions (judge, teacher, police officer, scientist, and physician). In contrast, the ratings of their fitness for "unreliable" professions (banker, CEO, journalist, real estate salesman, and politician) yielded a significant difference in only one video clip (and contrary to expectations). Our findings thus indicate that the subjective labeling of crying as fake is associated with a significantly less positive perception of the "crying" person, regardless of whether the crying is actually fake or genuine. The qualification of tears as crocodile tears thus seems to affect the crier's image strongly negatively.

In order to examine (1) the stability of the mother-child-bond and (2) associations between mother-child-bonding and aspects of maternal-well-being, pregnant women (N = 170) completed measures on well-being and mother-child-bonding at two antepartum and two postpartum time points. We found relatively weak associations between mother-child-bonding at 20 weeks of gestation and mother-child-bonding at 6 months postpartum. Fear of childbirth was weakly, but statistically significantly associated with mother-child-bonding at 6 weeks (but not at 6 months) postpartum. Correlations between antepartum general well-being and social support, on the one hand, and mother-child-bonding, on the other, failed to reach statistical significance. Women with a partner had a better mother-child-bonding at 36 weeks of gestation and 6 months postpartum, than women without a partner, and older women had better mother-child-bonding at 20 weeks of gestation, than younger women. Our findings thus suggest that mother-child-bonding is not a very stable phenomenon, but it is quite robust against potential negative influences of poor maternal mental health.

Although several scholars acknowledge the existence of tears of joy, there is little systematic theoretical or empirical evidence on how positive tears are experienced, what elicits them, what actions or impulses they motivate in the crier, how they differ from tears of sadness or distress and whether there are different types. We systematically investigated these issues and drafted a first taxonomic model of positive tears. Drawing on more than 1500 reports of positive tears and including 13124 participants from 40 diverse countries and 24 languages, the studies employed a strong mixture of quantitative and qualitative techniques. The final results showed evidence of the occurrence of positive tears and found four qualitatively different types and profiles that we termed achievement, beauty, affection, and amusement tears. Achievement tears are often shed in contexts of extraordinary performance or when someone overcomes an obstacle and often include feelings of pride. Beauty tears occur commonly in situations of overwhelming elegance or beauty, including nature, music or visual arts, and feature feelings of awe or experiencing chills. Affectionate tears are often experienced in situations including unexpected kindness or exceptional love such as wedding ceremonies or reunions and often feature feelings of warmth, increased communality, and feeling touched or compassionate. Finally, amusement tears are shed when something especially funny occurs and include feelings of amusement or lightness and the inclination to laugh or giggle. We also investigated cross-cultural and inter-individual differences with regard to these categories and discuss limitations and implications of our taxonomy of positive tears.

Various scholars have noted that the label "victim" frequently elicits connotations of stereotypical, passive femininity-especially when the crime entails rape or other forms of sexual violence. In three online experimental studies, British respondents were recruited to test whether written information about a sexual assault led observers to perceive the victim as more feminine in terms of character traits and facial appearance. Study 1 (n = 139) compared observers' perceptions of a male victim to a man accused of sexual assault and a control condition. Study 2 (n = 165) was a conceptual replication, replacing the male with a female target. Study 3 (n = 278) extended Study 1 by adding a condition with a male victim of physical assault and another with a man who had engaged in consensual homosexual sex in order to assess whether feminizing effects were unique to victimization by sexual assault. Results revealed partial support for the feminization hypothesis. Male and female victims were consistently attributed fewer proscriptive masculine traits than target persons in other conditions, as well as more prescriptive feminine traits than target persons in the accused condition. Results for the feminization of facial features were inconsistent. We discuss potential implications of the results for sexual violence awareness-raising campaigns and understanding victims' potential identity struggles.