How Visible Tears Affect Observers’ Judgements and Behavioral Intentions: Sincerity, Remorse, and Punishment

Picó, Alfonso; Gračanin, Asmir; Gadea, Marién; Boeren, Andrea; Aliño, Marta; Vingerhoets, A.J.J.M.

doi:10.1007/s10919-019-00328-9

Cited by 27 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…For competence, we included the items "competence" and "capable," identified through the same procedure as the warmth items. To assess honesty, we used two items from previous studies (Picó et al, 2020):…”

Section: Perceived Competence Honesty Dominance and Attractivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries

Zickfeld

Ven

Pich

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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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.

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Section: Perceived Competence Honesty Dominance and Attractivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries

Zickfeld

Ven

Pich

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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“…For competence, we include the items competence and capable, identified through the same procedure as the warmth items. To assess honesty, we will use two items from previous studies (Picó et al, 2020): honest and reliable. Finally, we include an item targeting perceived dominance using dominant and attractiveness using attractive (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008).…”

Section: Perceived Competence Honesty Dominance and Attractiveness mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Zickfeld¹,

Ven²,

Pich³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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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.

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“…The main objectives of this study were to evaluate some of the suggested functional roles of tears and to explore the modification of gaze behavior when subjects are presented with faces with visible tears. Earlier research carried out in our laboratory showed how visible tears are capable of altering inferences regarding emotional intensity and sincerity perceived in human faces ( Picó et al, 2020 ). In the present experiment, we replicated some of the results of our previous study with regards to faces engaged in calm crying.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…These photographs had been used in previous studies ( van de Ven et al, 2016 ; Vingerhoets et al, 2016 ; Zickfeld et al, 2018 ; Stadel et al, 2019 ; Picó et al, 2020 ). The photographs were taken in the precise moment when the subject was engaged in calm crying – the particular distinction of which is the presence of visible tears with little marked emotional expression – in a spontaneous way (see details of the photographs in Picó et al, 2020 ). The images were manipulated to digitally remove the visible tears so that the experiment was carried out with a total of eight images: four with tears and four without, representing both genders in each case.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, this study was performed with a limited number of visual stimuli (i.e., faces). We could have increased the number of stimuli to be more in line with other studies, but the selection was made with the aim of replicating and extending previous findings ( van de Ven et al, 2016 ; Vingerhoets et al, 2016 ; Picó et al, 2020 ). Moreover, as mentioned in “Materials and Method,” the subjects were selected based on their ecological validity, i.e., they were calm crying in a spontaneous way.…”

Section: Strengths and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How Our Gaze Reacts to Another Person’s Tears? Experimental Insights Into Eye Tracking Technology

2020

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Crying is an ubiquitous human behavior through which an emotion is expressed on the face together with visible tears and constitutes a slippery riddle for researchers. To provide an answer to the question “How our gaze reacts to another person’s tears?,” we made use of eye tracking technology to study a series of visual stimuli. By presenting an illustrative example through an experimental setting specifically designed to study the “tearing effect,” the present work aims to offer methodological insight on how to use eye-tracking technology to study non-verbal cues. A sample of 30 healthy young women with normal visual acuity performed a within-subjects task in which they evaluated images of real faces with and without tears while their eye movements were tracked. Tears were found to be a magnet for visual attention in the task of facial attribution, facilitating a greater perception of emotional intensity. Moreover, the inspection pattern changed qualitatively and quantitatively, with our participants becoming fully focused on the tears when they were visible. The mere presence of a single tear running down a cheek was associated with an increased emotional inference and greater perception of sincerity. Using normalized and validated tools (Reading the Eyes in the Mind Test and the SALAMANCA screening test for personality disorders), we measured the influence of certain characteristics of the participants on their performance of the experimental task. On the one hand, a higher level of cognitive empathy helped to classify tearful faces with higher emotional intensity and tearless faces with less emotional intensity. On the other hand, we observed that less sincerity was attributed to the tearful faces as the SALAMANCA test scores rose in clusters A (strange and extravagant) and B (immature and emotionally unstable) of our sample. The present findings highlight the advantages of using eye tracking technology to study non-verbal cues and draw attention to methodological issues that should be taken into account. Further exploration of the relationship between empathy and tear perception could be a fruitful avenue of future research using eye tracking.

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How Visible Tears Affect Observers’ Judgements and Behavioral Intentions: Sincerity, Remorse, and Punishment

Cited by 27 publications

References 38 publications

Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries

Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries

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

How Our Gaze Reacts to Another Person’s Tears? Experimental Insights Into Eye Tracking Technology

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