Tearful crying is a ubiquitous and likely uniquely human phenomenon. Scholars have argued that emotional tears serve an attachment function: Tears are thought to act as a social glue by evoking social support intentions. Initial experimental studies supported this proposition across several methodologies, but these were conducted almost exclusively on participants from North America and Europe, resulting in lim...
The present project wants to examine the importance of emotional crying as an attachment behaviour and its fundamental role across a number of diverse cultures. Emotional tears are uniquely human and have fascinated scholars across several decades (Vingerhoets, 2013). Some researchers argue that tearful crying played a significant role in the evolution of humankind with regard to social development and solidari...
English-speakers sometimes say that they feel moved to tears, emotionally touched, stirred, or that something warmed their heart; other languages use similar passive contact metaphors to refer to an affective state. We propose and measure the concept of kama muta to understand experiences often given these and other labels. Do the same experiences evoke the same kama muta emotion across nations and languages? W...
What are the social signals of emotional tears? This question has fascinated scholars ever since Darwin. Studies have suggested several interpersonal effects of emotional tears. A recent study by Van de Ven, Meijs, and Vingerhoets (2017) presented evidence in three studies that tearful individuals are perceived as warmer, but also less competent than their non-tearful counterparts. However, the competence effec...