Your experience may vary, but scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel say a woman’s tears can calm men down.
The researchers have found that there’s a chemical compound in a woman’s tears that actually lowers levels of aggression in men.
Scientists had previously found mice and other mammals’ tears contain odorless chemicals that have an effect on others, an exchange called chemosignaling. But the Israeli researchers’ experiment discovered it works in humans, too.
According to their study, which was published in the medical journal PLOS Biology, male subjects were asked to play games designed to trigger aggressive behavior in other male players, and those who sniffed female tears as opposed to a saline solution saw rates of aggression drop by a “remarkable” 43.7%.
For the record, the tears were donated by female volunteers “who can cry with ease,” the researchers explained.
Moreover, MRI scans of the subjects’ brains showed less activity in the region associated with aggressive behavior, and the subjects’ testosterone levels were lowered in the group that smelled the real McCoy vs. the saline.
The scientists declared that tears aren’t just a byproduct of mammalian “eye maintenance,” as Charles Darwin hypothesized back in the day. Instead, the study “depicts tears as a chemical blanket protecting against aggression, a mechanism common to rodents and humans.”