Is Crying a Sign of Intelligence? What the Research on Tears Shows

Crying is not a sign of intelligence: I could find no study that links how often adults cry to their IQ, and the traits that do predict crying are being female and being emotionally sensitive, neither of which is reasoning ability. Whether crying signals emotional intelligence has not been tested directly either, although people who report more empathy also report crying more easily.

Most of what science knows about adult crying comes from a small research community led by the Dutch psychologist Ad Vingerhoets. This page covers what their surveys and experiments show about who cries and why, what tears communicate to other people, the popular idea that very smart people are more emotional, and the one place where crying and IQ scores do meet in the research: babies who cry far more than usual.

There is no direct evidence. Searches of the medical and psychological literature turn up studies of crying and personality, mood, culture and attachment, but none that gave adults an intelligence test and recorded how often they cry. So the honest answer to "is crying a sign of intelligence" is that the question has not been studied, and nothing in the related research suggests a link.

The idea that bright people feel things more intensely does have a history. It comes mainly from the gifted-education concept of "overexcitability," a heightened response to stimulation, including emotional stimulation, which our page on IQ and the highly sensitive person discusses in more detail. Two studies get cited most often in the emotional version of the claim.

• The Mensa survey: Karpinski and colleagues surveyed 3,715 members of American Mensa, a society for people scoring at or above the 98th percentile, and reported far higher rates of self-reported mood and anxiety disorders than national averages. The members chose to take part, the diagnoses were self-reported, and the comparison was with national statistics gathered in a different way, so the design cannot separate intelligence from who answers such a survey.

• The meta-analysis: Winkler and Voight pooled studies comparing the overexcitability scores of gifted and non-gifted samples. Gifted groups scored higher overall, but the difference for emotional overexcitability was small. The larger differences were on intellectual and imaginational scales, which overlap with the curiosity that gets people labeled gifted in the first place.

A better test comes from population data. Williams and colleagues compared 16,137 UK Biobank participants whose general cognitive ability was at least 2 standard deviations above the mean (an IQ of about 130 or higher) with 236,273 people in the average range. The high-ability group had less generalized anxiety (odds ratio 0.69, roughly 30% lower odds) and slightly lower neuroticism, the personality trait most closely tied to crying. If anything, that points away from the idea that high intelligence comes with more tears.

Most searches for this topic are really asking about emotional intelligence, the ability or tendency to perceive, understand and manage emotions. Our article on emotional intelligence explains how the concept is measured and why researchers disagree about it. No study I found has tested crying frequency against an emotional intelligence questionnaire or ability test, so any answer here is indirect.

The closest evidence concerns empathy. Denckla, Fiori and Vingerhoets developed a Crying Proneness Scale using a Dutch panel of 4,916 adults. Crying proneness split into four kinds of tears: attachment tears (over loss and separation), societal tears, sentimental or moral tears, and compassionate tears for others' suffering. Scores were related to empathy in the expected direction, with more empathic people more prone to tears. Our page on IQ and empathy covers how empathy itself relates to intelligence.

Personality points the other way for some kinds of crying. In a study of 104 Dutch adults, Peter, Vingerhoets and Van Heck found that women who cried more often, and who were more prone to tears for both negative and positive reasons, scored lower on emotional stability. In men, only crying for negative reasons was linked to lower emotional stability. That matters because questionnaire measures of "trait" emotional intelligence are largely measures of personality. In a meta-analysis of 142 data sources and 36,268 people, van der Linden and colleagues found that trait emotional intelligence correlated about .85 with a general factor of personality that includes emotional stability. A person who cries easily could therefore score higher on empathy and lower on such a questionnaire at the same time.

The fair reading is that crying is a sign of emotional sensitivity, and sensitivity can come with either high or low scores on emotional intelligence measures.

The largest source of data is the International Study on Adult Crying, a survey run in 37 countries by Vingerhoets and colleagues. Two findings are consistent across that work and smaller studies.

• Sex: Women report crying more often than men, and say they are more prone to cry for both sad and happy reasons. In the Peter study, sex still predicted crying proneness after personality was taken into account.

• Country: People in wealthier, more democratic countries report crying more often, as do people in individualistic cultures. Van Hemert, van de Vijver and Vingerhoets concluded that national differences reflect norms about emotional expression more than levels of hardship, and the gap between men and women was larger in wealthier countries.

Neither pattern says anything about intelligence. Both say a great deal about upbringing and social rules for showing feelings.

Vingerhoets argues in his book Why Only Humans Weep that humans are the only animals known to shed emotional tears, and that tears evolved mainly as a social signal that draws help and reduces aggression. Research on the effects of crying supports parts of that picture.

• Mood afterwards: In the international survey data analyzed by Bylsma, Vingerhoets and Rottenberg, most men and women recalled feeling better after their last cry. In a daily diary study of 1,004 crying episodes, the same team found that only about 30% of episodes were followed by better mood. The laboratory resolves part of this puzzle. Gračanin and colleagues showed an emotional film to 60 people and found that the 28 who cried felt worse immediately afterwards, were back to baseline about 20 minutes later and felt better than before the film at 90 minutes.

• How criers are seen: Van de Ven, Meijs and Vingerhoets showed 1,042 participants photographs of faces with visible tears or with the tears digitally removed. Tearful faces were rated as warmer and as less competent. A follow-up by Zickfeld and colleagues with more photographs replicated the warmth effect but found the competence effect shrank and was no longer significant, so the claim that tears make people look less capable is not established.

So crying seems to regulate mood over time and to signal a need for support. Gračanin, Bylsma and Vingerhoets describe it as a self-soothing behavior that works partly through the comfort it draws from others. None of these functions is tied to how well someone reasons.

You will find the claim that a crying baby is a sign of intelligence on parenting forums, but I found no study supporting it. The research that exists tests the reverse concern, that very heavy crying might signal later problems, and it mostly finds small or no effects.

Ordinary crying is common. Wolke, Bilgin and Samara pooled diary studies of 8,690 infants and found that babies fuss and cry for about two hours a day on average in the first six weeks, falling to about 68 minutes by 10 to 12 weeks. "Colic," crying that meets standard thresholds for duration, affected 17% to 25% of infants in the first six weeks and was rare after nine weeks.

Two studies looked at intelligence. In a U.S. cohort of 327 children, Rao and colleagues found that colic alone had no effect on IQ at age 5, but children whose excessive crying persisted beyond 3 months scored 9 points lower on average (about 0.6 of a standard deviation) after adjustment for other risk factors. In a much larger German study of 4,427 children born at risk, Wolke and colleagues found that crying and feeding problems at 5 months had a small but significant adverse link with cognitive scores at 56 months. Neither design can show that crying causes anything; the crying may be an early sign of underlying differences in development. Persistent crying beyond the first three months is a reason to talk to a pediatrician, which is what Rao's team recommended.

No study has shown that. Crying easily is linked to being female and to emotional sensitivity, including empathy, and neither is a measure of reasoning ability.

There are no direct data. In the UK Biobank, people with very high cognitive ability had lower odds of anxiety and slightly lower neuroticism, which does not suggest more crying.

It has not been tested directly. People who score higher on empathy report crying more easily, but emotional intelligence questionnaires also reward emotional stability, which is linked to crying less.

No research supports this. One study found that children whose excessive crying lasted beyond 3 months scored lower on IQ tests at age 5, while ordinary colic made no difference.

Most people report feeling better after crying, and laboratory studies suggest mood recovers and improves within about an hour and a half. Frequent crying that feels uncontrollable or comes with low mood is a reason to see a doctor or mental-health professional.

Crying tells you about a person's emotional sensitivity and the norms they grew up with. It says nothing measurable about their intelligence, and the popular link between deep feelings and a high IQ rests on self-selected surveys rather than population data. Emotional and cognitive abilities are best assessed separately; if you want to know where your reasoning ability stands, take a full-length online IQ test.

1. Bylsma, L. M., Croon, M. A., Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M., & Rottenberg, J. (2011). When and for whom does crying improve mood? A daily diary study of 1004 crying episodes. Journal of Research in Personality, 45(4), 385-392. [doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2011.04.007](. doi.org

2. Bylsma, L. M., Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M., & Rottenberg, J. (2008). When is crying cathartic? An international study. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 27(10), 1165-1187. [doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2008.27.10.1165](. doi.org

3. Denckla, C. A., Fiori, K. L., & Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M. (2014). Development of the Crying Proneness Scale: Associations among crying proneness, empathy, attachment, and age. Journal of Personality Assessment, 96(6), 619-631. [doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2014.899498](. doi.org

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5. Gračanin, A., Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M., Kardum, I., Zupčić, M., Šantek, M., & Šimić, M. (2015). Why crying does and sometimes does not seem to alleviate mood: A quasi-experimental study. Motivation and Emotion, 39(6), 953-960. [doi.org/10.1007/s11031-015-9507-9](. doi.org

6. Karpinski, R. I., Kinase Kolb, A. M., Tetreault, N. A., & Borowski, T. B. (2018). High intelligence: A risk factor for psychological and physiological overexcitabilities. Intelligence, 66, 8-23. [doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2017.09.001](. doi.org

7. Peter, M., Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M., & Van Heck, G. L. (2001). Personality, gender, and crying. European Journal of Personality, 15(1), 19-28. [doi.org/10.1002/per.386](. doi.org

8. Rao, M. R., Brenner, R. A., Schisterman, E. F., Vik, T., & Mills, J. L. (2004). Long term cognitive development in children with prolonged crying. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 89(11), 989-992. [doi.org/10.1136/adc.2003.039198](. doi.org

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10. van de Ven, N., Meijs, M. H. J., & Vingerhoets, A. (2017). What emotional tears convey: Tearful individuals are seen as warmer, but also as less competent. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56(1), 146-160. [doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12162](. doi.org

11. van Hemert, D. A., van de Vijver, F. J. R., & Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M. (2011). Culture and crying: Prevalences and gender differences. Cross-Cultural Research, 45(4), 399-431. [doi.org/10.1177/1069397111404519](. doi.org

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13. Williams, C. M., Peyre, H., Labouret, G., Fassaya, J., Guzmán García, A., Gauvrit, N., & Ramus, F. (2023). High intelligence is not associated with a greater propensity for mental health disorders. European Psychiatry, 66(1), e3. [doi.org/10.1192/j.eurpsy.2022.2343](. doi.org

14. Winkler, D., & Voight, A. (2016). Giftedness and overexcitability: Investigating the relationship using meta-analysis. Gifted Child Quarterly, 60(4), 243-257. [doi.org/10.1177/0016986216657588](. doi.org

15. Wolke, D., Bilgin, A., & Samara, M. (2017). Systematic review and meta-analysis: Fussing and crying durations and prevalence of colic in infants. The Journal of Pediatrics, 185, 55-61. [doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2017.02.020](. doi.org

16. Wolke, D., Schmid, G., Schreier, A., & Meyer, R. (2009). Crying and feeding problems in infancy and cognitive outcome in preschool children born at risk: A prospective population study. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 30(3), 226-238. [doi.org/10.1097/DBP.0b013e3181a85973](. doi.org

17. Zickfeld, J. H., van de Ven, N., Schubert, T. W., & Vingerhoets, A. (2018). Are tearful individuals perceived as less competent? Probably not. Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology, 3(2), 119-139. [doi.org/10.1080/23743603.2018.1514254](. doi.org

Hero image: Mater Dolorosa (Sorrowing Virgin), workshop of Dieric Bouts, Art Institute of Chicago, Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.