Tears Trigger the Intention to Offer Social Support: A Systematic Investigation of the Interpersonal Effects of Emotional Crying Across 36 Countries

Abstract

Tearful crying is a ubiquitous and mainly human phenomenon. The persistence of this behavior throughout adulthood has fascinated and puzzled many researchers. Scholars have argued that emotional tears serve an attachment function: Tears are thought to act as a social glue that binds individuals together and triggers social support intentions. Initial experimental studies supported this proposition across several methodologies, but these were typically conducted only across Western participants, resulting in limited generalizability. The present study examines this effect across 36 countries spanning all populated continents, providing the most comprehensive investigation of the social effects of tearful crying to-date. Next to testing possible mediating factors, we also examine a number of moderating factors, including the crier’s gender and group membership, the situational valence (positive or negative situations), the social context (in private or public settings), the perceived appropriateness of crying, and trait empathy of the observer. The current work can inform theories on crying across the social sciences.

When They Cry: Tears Facilitate Responses toward Members of Socially Disadvantaged Groups

“…Further, various situational or contextual factors may also influence the effect of tears, and the image of a tearful immigrant male used in our study leaves it open to interpretation as to why the man is crying (see Zickfeld et al, 2020) It is likely that our participants attributed the crying to a personal tragedy (e.g., losing family members on the journey or leaving family behind). However, the same tears might produce different reactions in a perceiver if they are shown as manipulative (e.g., when caught by police or during an immigration interview).…”

Tears do not influence competence in general, but only under specific circumstances: A systematic investigation across 41 countries

“…A systematic investigation across 41 countries Both everyday experience and scientific research show that the adaptive role of emotional tears goes far beyond their intrapersonal functions (Gračanin et al, 2018;Vingerhoets et al, 2000). Studies demonstrated that tears act as a social glue that bonds individuals together by fostering approach tendencies and eliciting the intention to support the crier (Van de Ven et al, 2017;Vingerhoets et al, 2016;Zickfeld et al, 2021). This interpersonal function of tears is driven by their impact on social perception.…”

“…This interpersonal function of tears is driven by their impact on social perception. Specifically, tears have a positive effect on perceived warmth of the crier (Van de Ven et al, 2017;Zickfeld et al, 2021), a universal dimension of person perception that is intrinsically linked to human bonding, rapport, and affiliation (Fiske et al, 1999).…”

“…Apart from the variables collected directly during the study, the dataset contains 32 country-level indicators that refer to cultural characteristics of the countries included in the project as well as target-specific indices based on the picture databases (e.g., facial features of the individuals presented in the pictures). The list of all variables is given in Table 1 and a more detailed description is provided in Zickfeld et al (2021) or given at https://osf.io/d3wsr/. Note.…”

“…We applied the same data transformations and score calculations as in Zickfeld et al (2021). The reliability of the two items (competence and capable) that measured our main outcome variable perceived competence was good at r = .76; see Supplementary Material for reliabilities per country.…”