You might think shedding tears is a natural way to vent stress and reset the mind after a difficult day. 

But new research suggests that a good cry isn’t the universal mood-booster we once thought it was.

An Austrian team took a closer look at what makes people cry, individual differences in crying and how it makes people feel afterward.

The way you feel after crying, it recently reported in the journal Collabra: Psychology depends almost entirely on why you started to cry in the first place.

For the study, 106 adults reported the positive or negative effects immediately after crying as well as 15, 30 and 60 minutes later; what triggered their tears; and how long and intensely they cried.

Unlike previous studies that relied on people's memories or artificial laboratory settings, this project captured emotions in real-time. 

Using a smartphone app, participants recorded 315 crying episodes. On average, each individual had five crying episodes over the four-week study, roughly one every five days.

Participants reported mostly crying in response to media (for example, while watching funny or sad movies); overload (feeling overwhelmed by a task or worrying about the future); and impotence/helplessness (such as the illness or death of a close friend or relative).

“Our goal was to study crying where and when it really happens — in everyday life,” said lead author Stefan Stieger, head of psychological methodology at Karl Landsteiner University in Krems on the Danube in Austria. “Using smartphones, we were able to capture crying episodes in real time and then follow emotional changes over the next hour.”

Researchers found that crying rarely provided immediate relief. In many cases, people reported feeling less positive and more distressed right after their tears stopped. 

However, the reason for their crying appeared to affect the outcome.

Individuals who cried because they felt lonely or overwhelmed had the most negative feelings afterward. 

On the other hand, those who cried while watching a movie or reading a touching book saw a decrease in their negative feelings.

Researchers said this distinction — between causes related to one’s own psychological needs and those related to something or someone else — could be ground for future study.

The data also highlighted male-female differences. 

Women in the study tended to cry more often, with longer, more intense episodes. They were also more likely to cry due to feelings of loneliness, while men were more often moved to tears by a sense of helplessness or media content.

Regardless of gender or cause, the study showed that the effects of crying didn’t last long. While some emotional shifts were measurable for up to 60 minutes, the impact completely vanished by the end of the day.

“The study shows that crying should not be seen as an automatic form of emotional relief,” said senior co-author Hannah Graf, a researcher at the university. “Its emotional effects seem to depend strongly on the context in which it occurs.”

Ultimately, crying is a complex part of people’s emotional lives rather than a simple pressure-release valve, researchers said.