Amid the worry and suffering wrought by COVID-19, tears of joy seem an unlikely topic for today’s news because they’re probably in short supply now. But my two studies with professor Hidekazu Sasaki of Utsunomiya University and others — involving nearly 600 Japanese men and women from teens through old age — offer important guidance for maximizing personal well-being during this stressful time.
First, the backstory: As an active international researcher/writer in positive psychology (popularly dubbed “the science of happiness”), I’ve long been interested in experiences so joyful that tears emerge. From narratives in such varied, ancient literary works as the Bible, the Greek Iliad, and the Sanskrit Mahabharata, it’s clear that people for millennia have cried in happiness.
Much later, 19th-century literary giants, including the English poet William Wordsworth and the American writer Edgar Allen Poe, gave thoughtful explanations about tears of joy. Yet, surprisingly, modern psychology had virtually nothing to say about this seemingly universal occurrence. As Abraham Maslow observed, it was as if the field had chosen to study only human misery, dysfunction and conflict — and ignored everything else.