The social function of tears in crying
-
1
University of Queensland, Australia
Despite various accounts of the function of tears over the last 150 years, scant research exists investigating its role in signalling sadness. In a set of three studies, we tested the hypothesis that tears signal the intensity of a person’s emotion and thus serve an important social function. In the first study, participants rated photos of men and women expressing sadness with either tears present or digitally removed from the faces. Analyses revealed that the presence of tears led to ratings of greater sadness (especially toward males) and more genuine emotion. In the second study we measured physiological responses to the same images used in Study 1. Forty photos were presented for 4 seconds each while facial electromyography (EMG) from the corrugator and zygomaticus muscle regions was recorded. Participants’ ratings of sadness and genuineness were nearly identical to those of Study 1. Corrugator activity was greater when tears were present versus when they were removed. In study 3, the role of culture was investigated using Caucasian and Asian participants. Participants viewed 40 images of Caucasian and Asian sad faces with no tears or tears digitally added. Self-reports revealed tears to be sadder and more genuine than no tears across all groups. However, females were overall perceived as sadder and more genuine than males. Interestingly, Caucasian participants showed no differences between groups in either their self-report or facial EMG. Asian participants, on the other hand, rated Caucasian faces as sadder than Asian faces when tears were present. However, more corrugator activity was displayed when viewing Asian male faces compared to Caucasian males when tears were present. Additionally, Asian participants showed less corrugator for Asian male faces compared to Asian females with no tears. We discuss our results with respect to the possible social benefits expressing tears may have.
Keywords:
Tears,
social,
emotion,
gender,
facial electromyography,
EMG,
culture
Conference:
ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Sydney, Australia, 2 Dec - 4 Dec, 2015.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Psychophysiology
Citation:
Sharman
LS,
Vanman
EJ and
Scambler
JL
(2015). The social function of tears in crying.
Conference Abstract:
ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.219.00056
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
02 Oct 2015;
Published Online:
30 Nov 2015.
*
Correspondence:
Miss. Leah S Sharman, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, l.sharman1@uq.edu.au