Tearful crying is a ubiquitous and likely uniquely human phenomenon. Scholars have argued that emotional tears serve an attachment function: Tears are thought to act as a social glue by evoking social support intentions. Initial experimental studies supported this proposition across several methodologies, but these were conducted almost exclusively on participants from North America and Europe, resulting in limited generalizability. This project examined the tears-social support intentions effect and possible mediating and moderating variables in a fully pre-registered study across 7,007 participants (24,886 ratings) and 41 countries spanning all populated continents. Participants were presented with four pictures out of 100 possible targets with or without digitally-added tears. We confirmed the main prediction that seeing a tearful individual elicits the intention to support, d = .49 [.43, .55]. Our data suggest that this effect could be mediated by perceiving the crying target as warmer and more helpless, feeling more connected, as well as feeling more empathic concern for the crier, but not by an increase in personal distress of the observer. The effect was moderated by the situational valence, identifying the target as part of one's group, and trait empathic concern. A neutral situation, high trait empathic concern, and low identification increased the effect. We observed high heterogeneity across countries that was, via split-half validation, best explained by countrylevel GDP per capita and subjective well-being with stronger effects for higher-scoring countries. These findings suggest that tears can function as social glue, providing one possible explanation why emotional crying persists into adulthood.

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.

Personality assessment as a pre-employment screening procedure receives great interest from both researchers and practitioners. One key concern for selection specialists is represented by the response distortion among job applicants completing personality inventories. There are different operationalizations of socially desirable responding. One of the most accepted operationalizations was provided by Paulhus who distinguished between two social desirability factors (the egoistic and moralistic bias) as well as their conscious and unconscious aspects (management and enhancement). The aim of the study reported here is to test the basic assumption of the Paulhus model of socially desirable responding. A convenience sample of 200 students (N = 21.61; SD = 1.46) completed the Comprehensive Inventory of Desirable Responding (Paulhus, 2006) and the International Personality Item Pool Questionnaire (Goldberg, 1999;by Goldberg et al., 2006). Questionnaires were applied in three conditions: honest responding, responding as an ideal manager job applicant, and as an ideal teacher applicant. Results give partial support to the existence of egoistic and moralistic bias. However, conscious and unconscious aspects of distortion were not found. In conclusion it could be said that Paulhus' model doesn't provide a full answer to the problem of the nature of socially desirable responding.

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Purpose Intimate partner violence (IPV) represents a widespread social and public health problem. Researchers have been shown association between IPV and mental health problems. The purpose of this paper is to present a review of the literature on relationship between wide ranges of mental health problems. Design/methodology/approach Research papers related to mental health problems among IPV perpetrators and published in leading academic journals in UK and abroad from 1987 to 2017 were identified and reviewed. Findings Although there were some equivocal findings, the authors found that most of the available research suggests that there is a variety of psychological health problems among IPV perpetrators. Specifically, there was evidence of a significant relationship between anger problems, anxiety, depression, suicidal behaviour, personality disorders, alcoholism or problem gambling and perpetration of IPV. Results from analysed studies identified high rates of co-morbid disorders in IPV perpetrators. Practical implications The findings highlight the need for treatment services to undertake screening and assessment of wide range of psychological difficulties to be able to provide best treatment approaches. Originality/value To the best of our knowledge, this is the first systematic review that has included studies evaluating various psychological health problems among perpetrators of IPV.