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| A closer look at a raindrop on Trillium reveals a world of possibilities. Would a closer look at tears do the same? Photo by Rafael Aguilar |
On the giving end: We are reading a scene from an epic fantasy, wherein a knight frets over the unknown fate of his true love. His distress moves him to weep copiously. Among my comments in response to this author’s work, “I know I’m expressing some prejudice when I say this, but I do prefer my fantasy knights to be men of few tears.”
On the receiving end: The chapter I’ve brought for critique includes a scene where a woman, confronted with a situation that brings on a rush of bitter memories, breaks down and cries. Among the comments of my peers in response to this work, “Having your protagonist cry makes her look weak.”
These are the comments that inspired this week’s topic of discussion, tears and crying.
Seeing someone cry -- or crying in the presence of others -- can make us just as uncomfortable in fiction as in life. Our interpretation of crying is laden with preconceptions and prejudices, even though most everyone would agree tears are normal, and that it would be a very strange person indeed who did not cry at least once during the difficult journey from birth to death.
The acceptability of crying varies greatly from culture to culture, and even from generation to generation within the same culture.
In contemporary U.S. society, crying is often associated with weakness or instability of character, and seen as the traditional domain of women and children (who then, by implication, are inclined to be weaker and more unstable than all those tearless adult males). Perhaps it is for this reason that there is a tendency among fantasy readers to want the strong protagonists – both men and women – to eschew tears as a form of self-expression.
Curious about the meaning and purpose of tears, I decided to bypass all the work out there that discusses societal constructs of crying, and cut to the biological core of the matter.
What is the physiological function of tears?
What do we know about the evolution of tears and crying?
Can scientific research inform how we incorporate tears into our stories, whether we let our characters cry, when and under what circumstances?
Unfortunately, my quest was hampered by the fact that we still know very little about the science of tears. Part of the reason is that people have only recently started asking questions about tears from a scientific perspective. But also, there are many obstacles involved in the scientific study of crying behavior, not the least of which is the difficulty of creating controlled situations that simulate the different social contexts in which tears might arise.
Still, some interesting tidbits that have surfaced in recent years. Here are a few:
Not all tears are created equal. The eye produces three kinds of tears, and only one of these are associated with emotional stress. In addition, there’s evidence that different kinds of emotional stress – joy, anger, sadness – may produce tears with different chemical composition; and that tears produced by adults and children, males and females, also differ in chemical composition.
From an evolutionary perspective, the advantages of crying behavior are likely to be very different for babies, children, and adults. In other words, while many people might associate crying with infantile behavior, the selection pressures that have favored crying in adults are not the same as those that have favored crying in children. For example, one evolutionary hypothesis proposes that crying in infants evolved to signal strength. The idea being that babies who demonstrated greater lung capacity were more likely to secure adequate care from their parents during hard times. In adults, crying has been hypothesized to function as a signal of submission (which, by the way, is not the same thing as signaling weakness), as a mechanism to halt the escalation of conflict, and/or as a tool for social bonding.
There’s evidence that tears might be a form of chemical communication and manipulation. This is where things get really interesting, but also unfortunately, where we have only tidbits of compelling data. Here are a few of those juicy morsels:
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| What makes a male mouse sexy? The potency of his tears. Photo by Joel Sartore |
It's been found that male mouse tears are aphrodisiacs. They contain a pheromone that makes females more receptive to mounting.
Naked mole rats have been reported to rub their bodies with tears as a technique to reduce aggression on the part of other individuals.
In humans, recent research indicates that just sniffing tears changes how men respond to photos of women, leading to all kinds of speculation as to whether human tears carry pheromones that lower sexual drive and/or aggression by affecting the production of testosterone.
In short, the research has begun to indicate that tears may not be associated with weakness, but with a different kind of strength. They may, in some cases, be an effective weapon of pheromonal warfare expertly crafted by the evolutionary process, the history and power of which remain a mystery to us.
Countless questions remain, of course. Do male and female tears differ in chemical composition? Do tears produced by different kinds of emotional stress – joy, sadness, anger – carry different pheromones? What are the chemical and physiological pathways involved in our response to another person’s tears?
So next time we judge a character by his or her tears, maybe we should think again. There is likely much more to that tear than meets the eye.
Naked mole rats have been reported to rub their bodies with tears as a technique to reduce aggression on the part of other individuals.
In humans, recent research indicates that just sniffing tears changes how men respond to photos of women, leading to all kinds of speculation as to whether human tears carry pheromones that lower sexual drive and/or aggression by affecting the production of testosterone.
In short, the research has begun to indicate that tears may not be associated with weakness, but with a different kind of strength. They may, in some cases, be an effective weapon of pheromonal warfare expertly crafted by the evolutionary process, the history and power of which remain a mystery to us.
Countless questions remain, of course. Do male and female tears differ in chemical composition? Do tears produced by different kinds of emotional stress – joy, sadness, anger – carry different pheromones? What are the chemical and physiological pathways involved in our response to another person’s tears?
So next time we judge a character by his or her tears, maybe we should think again. There is likely much more to that tear than meets the eye.
Posted by Karin Rita Gastreich
Want to read more about tears? A good place to start would be these links to the National Geographic website: