Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries
Janis Zickfeld, Niels van de Ven, Olivia Pich, Thomas W. Schubert, Jana Berkessel, José J. Pizarro, Braj Bhushan, Niño José Mateo, Sergio Barbosa, Leah Sharman, Gyöngyi Kökönyei, Elke Schrover, Igor Kardum, John Jamir Benzon R. Aruta, Ljiljana B. Lazarević, María Josefina Escobar, Marie Stadel, Patrícia Arriaga, Arta Dodaj, Rébecca Shankland, Nadyanna M. Majeed, Yansong Li, Eleimonitria Lekkou, Andree Hartanto, Asil Ali Özdoğru, Leigh Ann Vaughn, María del Carmen Espinoza, Amparo Caballero, Anouk Kolen, Julie Karsten, Harry Manley, Nao Maeura, Mustafa Eşkısu, Yaniv Shani, Phakkanun Chittham, Diogo Conque Seco Ferreira, Jozef Bavoľár, Irina Konova, Wataru Sato, Coby Morvinski, Pilar Carrera, Sergio Villar, Agustín Ibáñez, Shlomo Hareli, Adolfo M. García, Inbal Kremer, Friedrich M. Götz, Andreas Schwerdtfeger, Catalina Estrada‐Mejia, Masataka Nakayama, Wee Qin Ng, Kristina Sesar, Charles T. Orjiakor, Kitty Dumont, Tara Bulut Allred, Asmir Gračanin, Peter J. Rentfrow, Victoria Schönefeld, Zahir Vally, Krystian Barzykowski, Henna‐Riikka Peltola, Anna Tcherkassof, Shamsul Haque, Magdalena Śmieja, Terri Tan Su-May, Hans IJzerman, Argiro Vatakis, Chew Wei Ong, Eun-Soo Choi, Sebastian L. Schorch, Darío Páez, Sadia Malik, Pavol Kačmár, Magdalena Bobowik, Paul E. Jose, Jonna K. Vuoskoski, Nekane Basabe, Uğur Doğan, Tobias Ebert, Yukiko Uchida, Xue Zheng, Philip C. Mefoh, René Šebeňa, Franziska A. Stanke, Christine Joy A. Ballada, Agata Blaut, Yang Wu, Judith K. Daniels, Natália Kocsel, Elif Gizem Demirag Burak, Nina F. Balt, Eric J. Vanman, Suzanne Stewart, Bruno Verschuère, Pilleriin Sikka, Jordane Boudesseul, Diogo Martins, Ravit Nussinson, Kenichi Ito, Sari Mentser
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 7007 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 = 0.49 [0.43, 0.55]. 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.