Men find women’s tears a turn-off
Women’s tears send ‘no sex’ message to men, according to Israeli researchers.
A chemical in women’s tears lowers men’s testosterone levels, say academics from the Weizmann Institute of Science and Wolfson Hospital, who looked at the role of tears in non-verbal communication.
Looking beyond any impact on sexual drive, the scientists hope their findings will be used in cancer treatment.
Professor Noam Sobel, of the Weizmann Institute, said: ‘There are a number of illnesses that are treated by lowering the levels of testosterone, the most prominent is prostate cancer.’
He said the current methods of testosterone reduction cause side effects, and his research team hoped that the use of tears could eliminate them.
Men who took part in the study, published in Science Express, were asked to sniff the tears of women who had cried while watching sad films.
Sobel said researchers had expected the tears would boost the men’s sense of empathy. Instead, their heart and respiratory rates, salivary testosterone and a brain scan all pointed to a reduction of sexual arousal. The chemo-signal in women’s tears, he said, was one way of saying ‘no, I am not interested.’
‘Communication is key to survival,’ Sobel added. ‘Humans, like all mammals, use smell in their communication. It is very efficient if you have a chemical signal which transmits what you want — or clearly don’t want — in a sexual situation.’
You can read the full story in Reuters.
What a bizarre study to carry out. One of the most frustrating things about experiments verging on the ridiculous is that they rarely publish details of the conditions, variables, basic participant data, or how the data was analysed. In this case, I don’t really see how ‘sniffing tears’ could be seen as useful. Will women now be called upon to donate tears? Will we have donor cards with our tear-type on? Stupid suggestions, I appreciate, but really.
The way I interpreted this study, was ‘don’t cry in front of your husband/boyfriend or he’ll reject you’.
Also suggesting there’s something ‘wrong’ with men – they cannot deal with emotion and are 100% sexual creatures ladies so don’t do anything to ‘turn them off’.
This study is a waste of effort really, almost makes me cry. Now where’s my box of tissues…
I’d be interested in seeing this research replicated with a view to seeing whether tears in general have this effect; i.e. do male tears have this effect on women, does the effect work with same gender participants and does the age of the crier have any impact? Seems to me that there’s a strong possibility that this is not an innately sexual response, but a survival mechanism.