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Tears Evoke the Intention to Offer Social Support: A Systematic Investigation of the Interpersonal Effects of Emotional Crying Across 41 Countries
Zickfeld, Janis H. van de Ven, Niels Pich, Olivia Schubert, Thomas W. Berkessel, Jana B. Pizarro, José J. Bhushan, Braj Mateo, Nino Jose Barbosa, Sergio Sharman, Leah
Zickfeld, Janis H.
van de Ven, Niels
Pich, Olivia
Schubert, Thomas W.
Berkessel, Jana B.
Pizarro, José J.
Bhushan, Braj
Mateo, Nino Jose
Barbosa, Sergio
Sharman, Leah
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Publication Date
2021-04-13
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Abstract
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 country-level
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.
Citation
Zickfeld, J. H., van de Ven, N., Pich, O., Schubert, T. W., Berkessel, J. B, Pizarro, J. ... Vingerhoets, A. (2021). Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 95, 104137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2021.104137
Publisher
Elsevier
Journal
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Research Unit
DOI
10.1016/j.jesp.2021.104137
PubMed ID
PubMed Central ID
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Article
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Series/Report no.
ISSN
0022-1031