Here in the U.S., we’re now between the Thanksgiving holiday travel surge and the winter holiday travel surge, with research showing that emotions are high. So, here’s a question: could hopping on a plane trigger a crying episode?
Zach Wichter decided to look into it for USA Today after dealing with travel-related crying sessions.
“There was a brief period in my adult life when I cried on every flight I took. Random things would set me off, the most ridiculous of these being the 2005 animated film ‘Robots,’” Wichter explained. He reached out to several experts to examine the relationship between emotions and flying.
Those readers who we’ve made concerned about the possibility of breaking down into tears mid-flight can breathe easy since Wichter found that, officially, we don’t cry more on planes.
“Numerous academic studies show that statistically, there’s not an appreciable increase in the rate of tears on airplanes compared to on the ground,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t have heightened emotions when you travel.”
For example, Albert Boquet – a professor of human factors and behavioral neurobiology at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University – noted that travel is tied to stress, if not tears. It also depends on why people are travelling.
“You have to consider that... when you look at passengers in general, that’s a very wide range of individuals,” Boquet said. “You have people who are regular travelers and how they experience travel is different than people who only do it occasionally.”
Jennifer Cheavens, a professor of psychology at The Ohio State University also explained that deviating from a schedule, essentially what many people are doing when people travel for the holidays, can impact our emotions more than we might realize.
“We’re more vulnerable to our emotions when we’re outside of our schedule or how we would normally take care of ourselves,” she said.
During the holidays, increased socializing in the form of parties, special events and searching for presents in crowded malls can leave people craving alone time. That’s according to results of a national survey of 1,000 Americans commissioned by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine released this week. These results showed that shows that 46% of Americans say they don’t get the alone time they need during the holidays.
Our team at Audacy is also curious about how flying in particular impacts our emotions. After the internet broke into an argument about whether a plane full of ukuleles was charming or hellish back in 2022, Dr. Kim Meidenbauer of the University of Chicago’s Neuroscience Research Lab joined the “Something Offbeat” podcast to explain how surroundings such as plane interiors can impact our brains and why emotions may seem heightened in artificial environments like an airplane cabin.
“There’s really cool research showing that people really underestimate the kind of mood benefit that they will have by interacting with nature,” she explained.
As for crying, even famous naturalist Charles Darwin was puzzled by emotional tearing. However, research from the Weizmann Institute of Science published last December in the PLOS Biology Journal indicated that human tears contain chemicals to reduce aggression in others, a trait shared by mice and blind mole rats. This research showed that women’s tears lowered brain activity related to aggression in men, therefore reducing aggressive behavior.
Still, this doesn’t always seem to work. Earlier this year, CNN reported on an incident aboard a Juneyao Airlines flight from the southwestern city of Guiyang to Shanghai in China. Per the report, two airline passengers locked a stranger’s crying grandchild in a plane restroom.
Meanwhile, adults in Washington D.C. have been gathering for “Cry n’ Vibe” events at a local library, according to The Washington Post.
Last year, AAA estimated that 7.5 million travelers planned to fly to their destinations from Dec. 23 to Jan. 1. If you’re one of the millions expected to fly this year and you see a fellow passenger with tears streaming down their face to the latest Pixar release… we urge you not to judge.