New Research Suggests That Sniffing Women’s Tears Can Result In An Over 40% Decrease In Aggression Among Men
Recent research suggests that sniffing women’s tears can have a surprising effect on men: it significantly reduces their aggression. This intriguing finding is the result of a study where men who smelled women’s tears showed over a 40% drop in aggressive tendencies, as indicated by both their behavior and brain activity.
Published in PLOS Biology, the study’s authors suggest that this calming effect might not be limited to women’s tears but could apply to all human tears, hinting at a protective role for this emotional expression.
“These findings suggest that tears are a chemical blanket offering protection against aggression and that this effect is common to rodents and humans, and perhaps other mammals as well,” said Noam Sobel, the study’s co-author.
While the field of human chemosignaling has been relatively unexplored, previous studies conducted by Sobel have noted the interesting effects of women’s tears on men. For instance, a decrease in testosterone levels.
“We knew that sniffing tears lowers testosterone and that lowering testosterone has a greater effect on aggression in men than in women, so we began by studying the impact of tears on men because this gave us higher chances of seeing an effect,” detailed Shani Agron, the study’s lead author.
Humans have the ability to detect a wide range of odors and chemicals released by others, which often subconsciously offer social cues. Prior studies indicate that humans can sense fear and anxiety through smell, and there’s evidence suggesting that sweat can communicate emotional states.
This phenomenon of chemical communication isn’t just limited to humans, either. For instance, dogs seem capable of sensing human chemosignals that reflect various emotions like joy and fear.
To investigate the role of tears in this context, the researchers gathered “emotional” tears from six women between the ages of 22 and 25. This small group was selected from over 100 volunteers because they were the only ones who could produce a sufficient amount of tears for the research.
According to Sobel, collecting the tears was a significant challenge for them. Each male participant required at least one milliliter of tears, which is quite a substantial quantity.
Chepko Danil – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
Additionally, the tears had to be natural and not induced by external stimuli like onion cutting, which actually produces a different type of tear. Instead, the most common method used by participants to generate tears was watching sad movies.
For the study, 25 male volunteers then engaged in a video game specifically crafted to provoke aggressive behavior. They competed against what they thought was a cheating human player, but in reality, it was a computer algorithm.
The level of aggression displayed by the men was assessed based on how often they opted to retaliate against their opponent. In a separate phase of the experiment, another group of 26 men also played the same game while inside an MRI scanner, which tracked their brain activity.
In both parts of the study, participants were exposed to either women’s tears or a saline solution– which are both odorless– without being told what they were sniffing.
The results showed a notable 43.7% reduction in aggressive behaviors in the men after they smelled the women’s tears compared to when they smelled the saline solution.
Furthermore, significant reductions in activity were observed in two key brain regions associated with aggression and decision-making: the left anterior insula and the prefrontal cortex.
There was also an increase in connections to the amygdala, a brain area involved in processing emotions and the sense of smell.
These results about the social chemosignaling capabilities of tears add to similar observations made in the animal kingdom. For example, subordinate male mole rats use tears as a strategy to prevent attacks from dominant males by covering themselves in tears. Plus, female mice produce tears containing a chemical that reduces aggression among male mice.
Now, the research team is interested in exploring whether women also experience decreased aggression after smelling tears and whether the tears of babies might elicit a similar reaction in adults.
To read the study’s complete findings, visit the link here.
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