ReviewHuman nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.)2018
Why Only Humans Shed Emotional Tears : Evolutionary and Cultural Perspectives.
Review in Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.), 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
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.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed.
- Emotional Tears: An Honest Signal of Trustworthiness Increasing Prosocial Behavior?Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behaviorTrial
- On the nature of grief: uncovering the evolutionary roots of loss across the animal realm.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Review
- Anatomical Evidence for a Uniquely Human Depressor Anguli Oris and a Novel Helplessness Signaling Hypothesis.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- AI-driven biomarker learning for the early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases: ABLEDx.Journal of nanobiotechnology · 2026Article
- Identifying Indigenous People's Grieving and Funeral Practices as Components for Establishing a Grief Support Framework: An Integrative Literature Review.Journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing · 2026Review
- The Emotional Crying Behavior Dataset (ECBD): A comprehensive resource to study the multifaceted nature of emotional crying.Behavior research methods · 2025Article
- The Ladder of Divine Ascent: New Scientific Evidence for an Old Theological Perspective on Crying.Journal of religion and health · 2025Article
- Development and validation of the PACPN: Parents' Attitudes Towards Crying Pediatricians and pediatric Nurses questionnaire.European journal of pediatrics · 2025Article
- Crying in psychotherapy: an exploratory mixed-methods study on forms of emotional crying and associated therapeutic interventions.Research in psychotherapy (Milano) · 2024Article
- Depression in adolescence and young adulthood: the difficulty to integrate motivational/emotional systems.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Review
- Article
- The rainbow connection: Disrupting background affect, overcoming barriers and emergent emotional collectives at "Pride in London".The British journal of sociology · 2022Article
- Healthcare Workers' Emotions, Perceived Stressors, and Coping Strategies at Workplace during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Palestine.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- The power of tears: Observers' brain responses show that tears provide unambiguous signals independent of scene context.Neuroimage. Reports · 2022Article
- Emotional expression in human odour.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Review
- The origin of smiling, laughing, and crying: The defensive mimic theory.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Review
- The red-beard evolutionary explanation of human sociality.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2021Article
- Ocular pigmentation in humans, great apes, and gibbons is not suggestive of communicative functions.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Searching where the treasure is: on the emergence of human companion animal partnership (HCAP).Animal cognition · 2021Review
- When animals cry: The effect of adding tears to animal expressions on human judgment.PloS one · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Producing emotional tears is a universal and uniquely human behavior. Until recently, tears have received little serious attention from scientists. Here, we summarize recent theoretical developments and research findings. The evolutionary approach offers a solid ground for the analysis of the functions of tears. This is especially the case for infant crying, which we address in the first part of this contribution. We further elaborate on the antecedents and (intra- and interpersonal) functions of emotional tears in adults. The main hypothesis that emerges from this overview is that crying evolved as an emotional expression that signals distress and promotes prosocial behaviors in conspecifics. Further, shedding tears may influence the mood of the crier and his/her outlook on life primarily as a consequence of fulfillment of the proposed signaling function of tears. We also describe how cultural phenomena such as ritual weeping nicely fit within this framework, as they often aim to support a request for help to a powerful person or deity and promote social bonding.
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29556968What OpenQuestion holds
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.