Just came back from seeing the movie Quill - a touching Japanese movie about a guide dog's life. It certainly doesn't take much to jerk those tears out of me. I came out all teary-eyed and red faced, as did a large majority of the audience- it couldn't have been a coincidence running into all of the teary, red-eyed women queuing in the washroom after the film.

But the funny thing is, that I didn't think that the movie was really all that touching at all, but I think that with these "meant to be tear jerkers", what happens is what I'd like to call conformed crying or collective crying. Once one person starts crying it sets off a domino effect, the person beside him/her starts crying and so on and so on- pretty soon the majority of the audience is crying and they don't even know why.

It's kind of like laughing at a stupid joke just because the joke teller is in hysterics over telling it or because others are laughing so hard over it, but you really don't get what's so funny about the joke or what the punchline is.

Crying or laughing can sometimes, quite simply be so contagious.