ArticleScience (New York, N.Y.)2011
Human tears contain a chemosignal.
Article in Science (New York, N.Y.), 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 74 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
74 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 253 citations in OpenAlex.
- The scent of emotions: A systematic review of human intra- and interspecific chemical communication of emotions.Brain and behavior · 2020Pooled it
- Reactivation-induced motor skill learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Trial
- Effects of chemosignals from sad tears and postprandial plasma on appetite and food intake in humans.PloS one · 2012Trial
- Scent of a father: Paternal body odors boost interbrain synchrony.Science advances · 2026Article
- The Ladder of Divine Ascent: New Scientific Evidence for an Old Theological Perspective on Crying.Journal of religion and health · 2025Article
- Glands of Moll: history, current knowledge and their role in ocular surface homeostasis and disease.Progress in retinal and eye research · 2025Review
- The relationship between social odour awareness and emotional contagion susceptibility in females.Perception · 2024Article
- Fluid Ejections in Nature.Annual review of chemical and biomolecular engineering · 2024Review
- ZnO Nanocages Decorated with Au@AgAu Yolk-Shell Nanomaterials for SERS-Based Detection of Hyperuricemia.ACS omega · 2024Article
- Fluid ejections in nature.ArXiv · 2024Article
- A chemical signal in human female tears lowers aggression in males.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Article
- Reactivation-induced motor skill modulation does not operate at a rapid micro-timescale level.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Why human olfaction should not be modeled on theories and tasks of vision.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Review
- There is chemistry in social chemistry.Science advances · 2022Article
- International consensus statement on allergy and rhinology: Olfaction.International forum of allergy & rhinology · 2022Review
- Emotional expression in human odour.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Review
- Sniffing the human body volatile hexadecanal blocks aggression in men but triggers aggression in women.Science advances · 2021Article
- The Role of Vision in the Emergence of Mate Preferences.Archives of sexual behavior · 2021Article
- Possible Use of Phytochemicals for Recovery from COVID-19-Induced Anosmia and Ageusia.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
14 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Emotional tearing is a poorly understood behavior that is considered uniquely human. In mice, tears serve as a chemosignal. We therefore hypothesized that human tears may similarly serve a chemosignaling function. We found that merely sniffing negative-emotion-related odorless tears obtained from women donors induced reductions in sexual appeal attributed by men to pictures of women's faces. Moreover, after sniffing such tears, men experienced reduced self-rated sexual arousal, reduced physiological measures of arousal, and reduced levels of testosterone. Finally, functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that sniffing women's tears selectively reduced activity in brain substrates of sexual arousal in men.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.