Speaker 1: My Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. This is Robert Lamp and this is Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we're back with part two of our series on tears.
Speaker 1: We figured out by today this is definitely going to
Speaker 1: be at least three parts because there's just so much
Speaker 1: that you know that the tears make an ocean and
Speaker 1: and uh, and they don't stop coming, so so there
Speaker 1: will be at least one more. Yeah, there's really there's
Speaker 1: almost too much. Because sometimes we look into things and
Speaker 1: we're like, okay, what is the what's the mythological ramifications
Speaker 1: of this? Are there any treatments of this and mythology
Speaker 1: or religion? And with something like tears, the answer is
Speaker 1: is yes, every religion, every mythology pretty much, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: so it's easy to get lost sort of just trade,
Speaker 1: you know, chasing some of these ideas down and then
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what which ones are worth talking
Speaker 1: about which ones are not. And then of course from
Speaker 1: the scientific point of view there uh, we've already rolled
Speaker 1: through I think some of the science of tears, and
Speaker 1: we have a bit more to cover today. Well, We've
Speaker 1: got a lot more to cover on the science of tears.
Speaker 1: In the last episode, we talked some about some of
Speaker 1: the basic, uncontroversial biological facts about tears, you know, like
Speaker 1: basal tears and reflex tears, what they're made of and
Speaker 1: and how how they're secreted from the lacrimal glands, and
Speaker 1: what they normally do. But the big question, the big
Speaker 1: sort of mystery about tears, is this question of human
Speaker 1: emotional tears. Humans appear to be the only animal that
Speaker 1: sheds tears as a response to emotional states, and so
Speaker 1: one of the huge questions is why, what is the
Speaker 1: biological purpose and thus what is the evolutionary justification unique
Speaker 1: to our species of liquid coming out of your eyes
Speaker 1: in response to feeling emotions. As we talked about in
Speaker 1: the last episode. You know, because this is not a
Speaker 1: settled question, there are just there tons of hypotheses that
Speaker 1: have been put forward over the years. We talked in
Speaker 1: the last episode about several very unlikely ones, for example,
Speaker 1: tears being a byproduct of an alleged aquatic ape past
Speaker 1: for human beings. This is almost certainly not correct because
Speaker 1: we don't put much stock in the aquatic ap hypothesis
Speaker 1: Another one is this idea that maybe tears are somehow
Speaker 1: derived from a conditioned response of our ancient ancestors to
Speaker 1: getting smoke in their eyes at funeral pyres after they
Speaker 1: started controlling fire. There are several reasons we talked about
Speaker 1: in the last episode by that that's probably not correct either.
Speaker 1: So over the next couple of episodes, we're going to
Speaker 1: be exploring a bunch more of the existing hypotheses about
Speaker 1: the evolutionary purpose of emotional tears. And I think you
Speaker 1: can sort these into three broad categories. The first being
Speaker 1: there there is no purpose, maybe they're just some kind
Speaker 1: of byproduct, the second being the purpose is intra personal,
Speaker 1: meaning internal to the body of the person who's crying.
Speaker 1: And then the third would be that the purpose is interpersonal,
Speaker 1: meaning that tears serve some kind of external or relational function. Now,
Speaker 1: on the score of no purpose explanations, here's the kind
Speaker 1: of surprising fact. Apparently, Charles Darwin actually believed that emotional
Speaker 1: tears served no purpose of their own, but rather were
Speaker 1: a byproduct of other purposeful adaptations, notably facial expressions and
Speaker 1: vocal expressions. In his eighteen seventy two book The Expression
Speaker 1: of Emotions, in Man and Animals, uh Darwin wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: the shedding of tears appears to have originated through reflex
Speaker 1: action from the spasmodic contraction of the eyelids, together perhaps
Speaker 1: with the eyeballs becoming gorged with blood during the act
Speaker 1: of screaming. Therefore, weeping probably came on rather late in
Speaker 1: the line of our descent. And this conclusion agrees with
Speaker 1: the fact that our nearest allies, the nthropomorphous apes, do
Speaker 1: not weep. So the second observation there being that that
Speaker 1: the other apes that were most closely related to they
Speaker 1: do produce tears, of course basal tears in their eyes
Speaker 1: and irritant tears, but they don't produce emotional tears. So
Speaker 1: that observation is correct. But I think Darwin's influenced in
Speaker 1: the in the first half of that paragraph there is
Speaker 1: almost definitely wrong. His idea is that, well, when we
Speaker 1: get upset, we cry out with our voices, and this
Speaker 1: makes like blood rushed to the face because you're screaming,
Speaker 1: and maybe all the blood sort of makes your eyes swell,
Speaker 1: and then they're Also when you're upset, there are facial
Speaker 1: muscle contractions like involuntary reflexive contractions of things like the eyelids,
Speaker 1: and this just sort of squeezes tears out as an
Speaker 1: accidental byproduct. I don't think I can go with Darwin
Speaker 1: on this one. This sounds really wrong. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, on one hand, we've already talked about the
Speaker 1: various sounds and screaming type uh effects that you see
Speaker 1: with with other primates. I mean, if you've been to
Speaker 1: a zoo or you've been to a natural environment where
Speaker 1: primates make their home, you may have heard this. So
Speaker 1: that they are there, they can create the kind of
Speaker 1: screaming that I guess could theoretically cause the eyeballs to
Speaker 1: become gorged with blood. So that doesn't seem to have
Speaker 1: much weight to it. Yeah, it's not that it would
Speaker 1: be impossible for contractions of the facial muscles to cause tears.
Speaker 1: I do think this may even be an explanation. I've
Speaker 1: seen this invoked as an explanation for why sometimes your
Speaker 1: eyes get teary when you yawn. Like when you yawn,
Speaker 1: that may put some kind of pressure on the lachrymal
Speaker 1: glands that causes some excessive tearing, which you know it
Speaker 1: leads to blurring of the vision. After you're done yawning,
Speaker 1: and then you might need to wipe your eyes, maybe
Speaker 1: a similar thing with coughing. So it's it's not impossible
Speaker 1: that contractions of the facial muscles could cause some tearing.
Speaker 1: It just seems like the tears being produced by the
Speaker 1: lachrymal glands during an emotional episode or something that exceeds this,
Speaker 1: this kind of tearing. Um and uh And I don't know,
Speaker 1: most researchers who focus on this area really do think
Speaker 1: that this is not a plausible explanation. It seems pretty
Speaker 1: clear that tears are a true adaptive trait that serve
Speaker 1: their own functions and function independently from just the contractions
Speaker 1: of the facial muscles. Because another question would be like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: if this is true for humans, how come other like
Speaker 1: apes that were closely related to don't also cry when
Speaker 1: they contract their facial muscles in in emotional episodes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like I said, it seems like we just have we
Speaker 1: have more evidence to the contrary at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it seems like tears are probably purposeful, a true
Speaker 1: adaptive trait of some kind. So the next category would be, well,
Speaker 1: maybe tears have some kind of intra personal purpose. They
Speaker 1: do something within the body, within the self, uh. And
Speaker 1: there are many ways of approaching this, but to cite
Speaker 1: a characteristic example of this type of explanation, I wanted
Speaker 1: to look at the detoxification hypothesis. This is one that
Speaker 1: used to be pretty popular but has really fallen out
Speaker 1: of favor historically. I think this is one of the
Speaker 1: most popular hypotheses for for explaining the function of tears.
Speaker 1: It was advanced by the American biochemist William Fry in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, I think first published in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: I believe and Fry's reasoning went like this, Okay, when
Speaker 1: humans are under stress, you're having some intense emotional you
Speaker 1: know about of emotion, there is a build up of
Speaker 1: potentially toxic substances in the blood. So you know, think
Speaker 1: about all the different uh stress effects of stress you
Speaker 1: learned about. You know, when when you're really distressed, your
Speaker 1: your bloodstream floods with cortisol. You're you're freaked out. You
Speaker 1: can almost kind of like feel it moving through your body,
Speaker 1: or at least maybe it's an illusion, but I feel
Speaker 1: like I can, like when I'm having a stressful experience,
Speaker 1: there's almost a sematic sensation of the spreading of this
Speaker 1: kind of like uh, aggravating numbness and fry positive that
Speaker 1: when this happens, when your body fills up with all
Speaker 1: these potentially toxic contaminants or horn stress hormones, things like that,
Speaker 1: the body cleanses these excess contaminants by purging them through
Speaker 1: the tear response, with the lachrymal glands acting like kidneys
Speaker 1: do for the urinary system. So under this hypothesis, you
Speaker 1: are you are peeing out your eyes when you are
Speaker 1: really stressed. Yeah, and I can I can understand why
Speaker 1: this idea, you know, had had some support behind it
Speaker 1: because I mean, on one level, yes, we can look
Speaker 1: to the kidneys in the urinary system and we can see, uh,
Speaker 1: we can see something like this. But to your point,
Speaker 1: the feeling of all this welling up inside of us
Speaker 1: and then the what often feels like a release. And
Speaker 1: I have to stress though that when when you get it,
Speaker 1: look at different accounts of weeping, and depending on the
Speaker 1: circumstances of the weeping, such as like solitary weeping versus
Speaker 1: public weeping, and then that's going to depend on the
Speaker 1: culture in the scenario in which is taking place. Um,
Speaker 1: you do see a lot of accounts where people say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I felt better after or I wept after. You know,
Speaker 1: all this built up and then was released. Uh, so
Speaker 1: we can under we could we can imagine where like
Speaker 1: looking at this idea of what the urinary system is doing,
Speaker 1: thinking about how we feel before and after an emotional outburst,
Speaker 1: we could easily fall in line with thinking like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: those that that was the top the toxins building up
Speaker 1: in my body, and I am letting the toxins out.
Speaker 1: Weeping is just the body releasing the poison. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is having a sort of like chemical read on
Speaker 1: the feeling of catharsis people uh sometimes experience from weeping. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: of course I should say before I move on that
Speaker 1: this hypothesis does not have much support among any modern
Speaker 1: tear response researchers. I was reading it seems like the
Speaker 1: evidence for it is not good. It has been strongly
Speaker 1: pushed back against. But like you're saying, it does have
Speaker 1: this intuitive appeal because there is a widespread belief in
Speaker 1: the healing power of tears. I actually I came across
Speaker 1: the stat that I found astounding. So I was reading
Speaker 1: an article in Time magazine by Mandy Oaklander from sixteen
Speaker 1: that was about interviewed several different researchers who work on
Speaker 1: the subject of tears, and it's cited one analysis that
Speaker 1: looked at a bunch of articles about crying in the
Speaker 1: media over a period of more than a hundred years,
Speaker 1: so going way back, and it found that nine four
Speaker 1: percent of them described crying as in some way good
Speaker 1: for the mind and body, and or described holding back
Speaker 1: tears as bad for the mind and body. And yet
Speaker 1: despite this gut feeling that people seem to have, I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel this way too. It's it's a common belief.
Speaker 1: This this this gut feeling that tears bring catharsis and
Speaker 1: relief and they heal you. They're good for you, they
Speaker 1: heal the mind and body. Evidence for this is apparently
Speaker 1: pretty scarce on the ground. The same article by Oaklander
Speaker 1: in Times cites a researcher named Jonathan Rottenberg, who is
Speaker 1: a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida
Speaker 1: who studies emotion and is on work with tears, and
Speaker 1: Rodenberg says that these claims about the healing power of
Speaker 1: tears are basically a fable there's just not much evidence
Speaker 1: that crying has strong measurable benefits to health, mental or physical,
Speaker 1: or that it predictably brings relief or catharsis. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it does bring a feeling of relief sometimes. I
Speaker 1: think we all know that from experience, but maybe not
Speaker 1: as consistently as we tend to infer. Yeah, one example,
Speaker 1: because some some of us might be you know, you
Speaker 1: might wonder, well, okay, what's an example of tears not
Speaker 1: having a beneficial effect. One example was brought up, I
Speaker 1: think this was in Holy Tears, was that some people,
Speaker 1: when queried on this, they mentioned that if they are
Speaker 1: weeping out of a feeling of loneliness and they are
Speaker 1: doing so in a solitary setting, that they may feel
Speaker 1: worse afterwards, which which I think is interesting and I
Speaker 1: think that can potentially shed light on some other theories
Speaker 1: or potentially provide um some possible evidence for supporting other
Speaker 1: hypotheses concerning the reason that we have tears, the function
Speaker 1: of tears and human in the human condition. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get to this in a minute, but
Speaker 1: I think this would be one of the many things
Speaker 1: that I would interpret as as possibly pointing to tears
Speaker 1: serving a primarily interpersonal function in communication and signaling between
Speaker 1: people exactly. Yeah, yeah, you can interpret it as meaning, well,
Speaker 1: you know that you did not feel better, because the
Speaker 1: the act of weeping is supposed to be communicating something
Speaker 1: to another human being. Yeah, and it is supposed to
Speaker 1: elicit a response from some But okay, so, so that
Speaker 1: addresses the question of like subjective feelings of relief. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes people feel feelings of relief after crying, sometimes people don't.
Speaker 1: But the other half of this, this intra personal interpretation,
Speaker 1: you know it does does crying do something for you,
Speaker 1: make to make your body better in some way, to
Speaker 1: give you some kind of internal benefit. The other question
Speaker 1: would be like, are there measurable ways that crying can
Speaker 1: be found to improve well being apart from just the
Speaker 1: the sort of immediate aftermath where you might feel a
Speaker 1: feeling of relief or not. What about other types of
Speaker 1: measures of physical and mental well being? Well, there was
Speaker 1: one study I came across that looked into this question,
Speaker 1: and it was by Hez Door for Vinger Hoots. That's
Speaker 1: that's add Vingerhoots, So I mentioned in the previous episode,
Speaker 1: and who will come up several more times in this
Speaker 1: and Michael R. Tremble in eighteen called social and psychological
Speaker 1: consequences of not crying possible associations with psychopathology and therapeutic relevance,
Speaker 1: And basically, the authors were trying to look into the
Speaker 1: question of okay, so that, um, what if you find
Speaker 1: people who report that they essentially never cried after a
Speaker 1: certain period in their life, they feel like they either
Speaker 1: lost the ability to cry or just at some point
Speaker 1: in their life they just stopped crying and just don't
Speaker 1: cry anymore. Um, can we compare their out comes in
Speaker 1: terms of standard measures of well being and social functioning
Speaker 1: compared to people who do cry on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: So they interviewed Auzy Hausborne because no more tears, that
Speaker 1: would have been good, But now so they say quote.
Speaker 1: Study participants included four hundred and seventy five people who
Speaker 1: reportedly lost the capacity to cry and a hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy nine normal control criers. Applied measures assessed crying, well being, empathy, attachment,
Speaker 1: social support, and connection with others, and the authors had
Speaker 1: hypothesized that people who don't cry would have lower well
Speaker 1: being and poor social functioning compared to people who do cry. Uh,
Speaker 1: and actually that's not exactly what they found. So they
Speaker 1: did find some differences. So people who did not cry,
Speaker 1: on average had fewer social connections and less social support,
Speaker 1: and also had somewhat less empathy, though of course that's
Speaker 1: not going to apply to everybody, and it's worth noting
Speaker 1: that those things I just mentioned aren't necessarily a result
Speaker 1: of not crying, but could maybe be causes of not crying,
Speaker 1: or could maybe be correlates with similar underlying causes. Um.
Speaker 1: But what they did what they did not find was
Speaker 1: indications of lower well being. In turns, it actually found
Speaker 1: that people who cry and people who don't cry were
Speaker 1: about the same in terms of psychological measures of well being,
Speaker 1: so you know, no more measurable depression, anxiety, and so forth.
Speaker 1: Thank thank now. Studies like this don't mean that we
Speaker 1: can be sure tears serve no intra personal purposes. You
Speaker 1: certainly can't rule it out. Tears may well serve some
Speaker 1: kind of purpose within the self, within the body, But personally,
Speaker 1: I've become pretty well convinced while researching for these episodes
Speaker 1: that the primary adaptive purpose of emotional tears is interpersonal,
Speaker 1: meaning it's external, it's social, and relational and that tears
Speaker 1: are prime merely for communicating something too and affecting the
Speaker 1: behavior of other members of our species other people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I after reading through Holy Tears, I I also
Speaker 1: feel like this is a very strong hypothesis, uh, in
Speaker 1: how they discuss the role of tears and religious rights
Speaker 1: and rituals. But but one area that I do have
Speaker 1: questions about would be, uh, the weeping during media um,
Speaker 1: like during a film or something. You know. Uh, I
Speaker 1: wonder if that is the same like when we weep
Speaker 1: during motion pictures. Is that a communal experience or is
Speaker 1: that a personal experience? Are we actually trying to communicate
Speaker 1: something to other people viewing the film? Oh? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean it wouldn't have to be It wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: be intentional on your part. I mean, weeping is often involuntary.
Speaker 1: It's usually involuntary, So weeping at a movie I think
Speaker 1: could very well be not something you're trying to do
Speaker 1: because you are in penstionally communicating with say the movie,
Speaker 1: or with other people you're watching the movie with. But
Speaker 1: instead it's a standard kind of response to um empathetic
Speaker 1: connection with drama you are seeing unfold and your brain
Speaker 1: can't really tell the difference between drama in media versus
Speaker 1: drama that would be going on with people in your life.
Speaker 1: So an adaptation that arises because it's useful with some
Speaker 1: some kind of social signaling function for other people also
Speaker 1: gets hijacked when you're watching a movie about people. That's true.
Speaker 1: So basically what we're talking about here would be it's
Speaker 1: like the old example of the train coming at the
Speaker 1: screen and early movie go where it's like freaking out,
Speaker 1: like ah, this the train is approaching. You jump because
Speaker 1: it is uh, it is something that it is stimuli
Speaker 1: that should cause you to jump and run away. But
Speaker 1: the tearful scene, the emotional scene in an emotion picture,
Speaker 1: that is something that is uh, that is more subtle,
Speaker 1: and we're just going to respond to it as if
Speaker 1: it is something that we should perhaps communally be responding to. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the same way that a scary movie partially
Speaker 1: simulates the feeling of real danger, or that a romantic
Speaker 1: movie can cause some kind of romantic arousal. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's all like, uh, there's a vicarious uh interaction with
Speaker 1: what's going on in the media as if it were
Speaker 1: taking place in real life. For a moment, I'd like
Speaker 1: to come back to something we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: the uh, the the hypothesis that there is a purging
Speaker 1: of toxins going on during weeping, because this reminds me
Speaker 1: of another topic we've discussed in the show before sweating. Uh.
Speaker 1: You also see some of this, um, some of this
Speaker 1: line of thinking being employed with sweating, sometimes with exercise,
Speaker 1: but I've seen it particularly with with sauna traditions. Why
Speaker 1: do people feel better after a sauna? What is a
Speaker 1: sauna doing? And you do see this sometimes there is
Speaker 1: this argument, well, when you're sweating, you're in the sauna,
Speaker 1: you release toxins. Uh. But I, if memory serves the
Speaker 1: situation is though when you look at like how much
Speaker 1: is shed via sweating versus how much is truly shed
Speaker 1: via urination? Um, there's just a huge gulf between those numbers. Uh.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't really match up, but it but it
Speaker 1: becomes difficult to untangle uh this not you know, concerning
Speaker 1: how much is purge via sweating, how much is how
Speaker 1: much would need to be purged to make a meaningful
Speaker 1: impact on your physiology, and how much we feel or
Speaker 1: believe we have purged having gone through the experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny. I'm also skeptical of the idea that this
Speaker 1: is why people feel a relief and after sweating or
Speaker 1: being in the song. I would expect probably it has
Speaker 1: more to do with I don't know, the pleasurable hormones
Speaker 1: that people get after, you know, exercise or something like that,
Speaker 1: maybe endorphins or something of that nature. Um, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm just spitballing there. But but yeah, I would be
Speaker 1: skeptical of that. And it's funny that what you say
Speaker 1: is um parallel to some arguments that are made against
Speaker 1: the detoxification hypothesis of tears, because um, much like with
Speaker 1: your sweating example, there's probably just not enough of the
Speaker 1: stuff in the tears to really make a major difference
Speaker 1: in the body. But but but in the next episode,
Speaker 1: I think we're going to get more into the direct
Speaker 1: formulations of some of the main contending hypotheses for for
Speaker 1: explaining the biological evolution of tears. That that will be
Speaker 1: more in the next episode. But I did want to
Speaker 1: talk about some some broad observations in the idea of
Speaker 1: tears as an external or interpersonal adaptation, something that is
Speaker 1: that serves a relational function and one piece of evidence
Speaker 1: that seemed somewhat convincing to me that tears serve an
Speaker 1: external and communicative purpose is that people just automatically, when
Speaker 1: they observed tears, interpret them as conveying information about the
Speaker 1: emotional states of the person who's crying. And it's not
Speaker 1: just that you look at a person who's who's crying
Speaker 1: and you say that person is sad. The tears themselves
Speaker 1: seem to convey very important information. And this was illustrated
Speaker 1: in some research I was reading about in a two
Speaker 1: thousand ten NPR article by Alison Aubrey called Teary Eyed Evolution,
Speaker 1: Crying serves a Purpose, and this featured an interview with
Speaker 1: the researcher named Randolph Cornelius, who was a professor of
Speaker 1: psychology at Vassar College. Uh. I'm citing this research in
Speaker 1: particular because it came with what I thought was a
Speaker 1: very useful visual aid. Um so so Cornelius, the psychologist
Speaker 1: he he, he is arguing that tears are useful because
Speaker 1: they convey information, and his research did something pretty clever.
Speaker 1: It took photographs of people who were crying and then
Speaker 1: digitally manipulated them to remove the tears. So you'd have
Speaker 1: the same face with the same expression when the person
Speaker 1: is crying, except without any tears visible in the eyes
Speaker 1: or on the cheeks. And what the study found is
Speaker 1: that people rated the same faces without tears as much
Speaker 1: more ambiguous. People consistently interpret tearful faces as sad, and
Speaker 1: they interpret them as having stronger emotional value. But people
Speaker 1: have a lot more difficulty inferring the feelings of those
Speaker 1: same faces without the tears. And so, to quote from
Speaker 1: Cornelius as as cited in this article, he says, quote,
Speaker 1: tears also narrow the range of emotions people think the
Speaker 1: models are experiencing. Tearful people are mostly seen as experiencing
Speaker 1: emotions in the sadness family, sadness, grief, morning, and so forth.
Speaker 1: And Robert, I really, once I looked at these images,
Speaker 1: it really hit home for me, because, yeah, so it
Speaker 1: will have two faces side by side. One is a
Speaker 1: crying face and the other is the same exact face,
Speaker 1: but photoshop to have the tears removed and the faces
Speaker 1: without tears. Whereas there's like one in the middle of
Speaker 1: a man crying with tears rolling down his cheeks and
Speaker 1: he looks very sad. And in the picture right next
Speaker 1: to him, without the tears, the same expression looks possibly
Speaker 1: kind of like smug or defiant. Yeah, I thought, kind
Speaker 1: of menacing. Like without the tears the tears removed, he
Speaker 1: kind of looks like I like he thinking I might
Speaker 1: just beat you up. But in the first one, it's
Speaker 1: it's clear this man has been watching a sad football
Speaker 1: movie and weeping openly. Uh. There's one that you shared
Speaker 1: above this of a child or I think it's a
Speaker 1: child looking up um, and with the tears are removed,
Speaker 1: it seems like they're perhaps just looking at a bird
Speaker 1: flying through the air, but with the tears, it's like
Speaker 1: they are looking up at a crucifixion. Yeah. Yeah, The
Speaker 1: same face without the tears could be interpreted is kind
Speaker 1: of like, um, I don't know, maybe concerned, but also
Speaker 1: displaying a possibly creepy kind of interest in something. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: at least to me, I immediately from these images can
Speaker 1: see the informational value of tears. They radically reduce the
Speaker 1: ambiguity in interpreting somebody else's facial expression, and and and
Speaker 1: suddenly you're not wondering like what is this person thinking?
Speaker 1: You immediately read them as like as kind of sad
Speaker 1: and vulnerable and helpless and not dangerous, whereas the same
Speaker 1: face without the tears is like, I don't know what's
Speaker 1: up with this person? Now? Of course this is all this,
Speaker 1: this all becomes more complicated when we we we think
Speaker 1: about some of the exceptions to this this rule that
Speaker 1: pop up, you know, regarding quinted person could be uh,
Speaker 1: a teary eyed you know, perhaps they have some sort
Speaker 1: of a tear gland situation going on, or perhaps there
Speaker 1: is some sort of irritant in the air, um, something
Speaker 1: of that nature. Perhaps they're their sinuses are are bothering them,
Speaker 1: or they just yawned. But if you're just looking at them,
Speaker 1: you're you're going to instantly go to that something something
Speaker 1: powerful or bad has happened and this person may need
Speaker 1: comfort in you know. This got me thinking about, um,
Speaker 1: another way that tears might work. This is not something
Speaker 1: that I found advocated in in any research, though somebody
Speaker 1: might have put this forward and I haven't read about
Speaker 1: it yet. Um, but this would be uh the idea
Speaker 1: that what if tears are you useful as an honest
Speaker 1: signal of emotions? That could have evolved as a response
Speaker 1: to the evolution of deceit so uh so, So what
Speaker 1: I'm imagining here is, you know, humans are are complex
Speaker 1: social animals managing complex social relationships, and human brains are
Speaker 1: complex enough that humans can lie about what they feel,
Speaker 1: and they can lie about who and what they care about.
Speaker 1: But because tears are difficult to fake, I wonder if
Speaker 1: maybe tears evolved as an honest signal of our true,
Speaker 1: motivating feelings, who and what we actually care about and
Speaker 1: how we feel about things. And thus I wonder if,
Speaker 1: possibly in that way, they could be adaptive because they
Speaker 1: make us more trustworthy. A person who cries about something
Speaker 1: is less likely to be lying about what their feelings
Speaker 1: about that thing are. This, of course makes my mind
Speaker 1: instantly go to actor. But that I mean, that's kind
Speaker 1: of a whole discussion in and of itself, because you
Speaker 1: get into how is the actor summoning the tears? Are
Speaker 1: they engaging with with actual tearful memories, or you know,
Speaker 1: a deep reading of the script and so forth. But
Speaker 1: ultimately the result is when you watch a film and
Speaker 1: the actor is summoning tears, it it makes anything that's
Speaker 1: going on on the screen more believable, no matter how
Speaker 1: poor the screenplay, no matter how weird the lighting. If
Speaker 1: the actor is is summoning actual tears in their performance
Speaker 1: like that, that gives it a leg up. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think it's worth noting that like most people, like
Speaker 1: some people can cry on command, but most people would
Speaker 1: have a hard time doing that, Like it's not easy
Speaker 1: to do unless you have that that chunk of onion
Speaker 1: in your in your handkerchief. Right, Is that the older
Speaker 1: actor's trick? Yeah, I guess so. So, yeah, maybe it
Speaker 1: has something to do with the evolution of deceit. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that's just sort of like a weird thought that popped
Speaker 1: into my head. Maybe that'll connect to some of the
Speaker 1: hypotheses that we that we discussing more detail in the
Speaker 1: next part. But I wanted to talk about another study
Speaker 1: that was interesting about ways that tears might be useful
Speaker 1: for interpersonal signaling and behavior manipulation. And this would be
Speaker 1: something that's not focused on conveying information that's perceived consciously,
Speaker 1: like what we were talking about with looking at tears
Speaker 1: on people's faces a minute ago. This would be operating
Speaker 1: at a subconscious level on the basis of chemical signaling
Speaker 1: or chemo signaling. This next example is also good because
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, this is a study that
Speaker 1: led to some maybe very misleading headlines in popular coverage.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so some studies in mice have found that
Speaker 1: behaviorally relevant chemo signals in tears. So these would not
Speaker 1: be emotional tears because mice don't shed emotional tears. These
Speaker 1: would just be regular basil or reflex tears. These chemo
Speaker 1: signals in mice include pheromones that uh, for example, can
Speaker 1: do things like make male mice more attractive as mates,
Speaker 1: or there can be chemo signals in juvenile mice that
Speaker 1: prevent adults from attempting unwanted mating behaviors with with those mice,
Speaker 1: so that they can have kind of uh, discouraging unwanted
Speaker 1: behaviors and other mice. And picking up on that research,
Speaker 1: there were some scientists who in your two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: looked into whether there could be similar chemo signals in
Speaker 1: human tears, and so this led to a study by
Speaker 1: Shanny Gelstein at All published in Science called human tears
Speaker 1: contain a chemo signal. Now, I want to be clear
Speaker 1: that I'm often kind of skeptical about I'm not quite
Speaker 1: sure why this is, but I think maybe because Uh.
Speaker 1: There have been a few studies along these lines that
Speaker 1: have later turned out to be not well founded. But
Speaker 1: I'm kind of skeptical about studies finding big macro behavioral
Speaker 1: effects of imperceptible smells and stuff in humans, so I
Speaker 1: would definitely want this verified by a good bit of
Speaker 1: independent replication. But if this the finding of the study
Speaker 1: is correct, what it found is that emotional tears in
Speaker 1: humans tend to contain chemicals that change the behavior of adults,
Speaker 1: especially adult men, possibly making them less aggressive and less
Speaker 1: likely to experience sexual arousal, maybe making them more likely to, say,
Speaker 1: provide care behaviors. The study measured this by having people
Speaker 1: uh smell tears that were from from human donors, and
Speaker 1: they found that tears that were produced by women who
Speaker 1: were experiencing negative emotions, when men sniffed those tears, they
Speaker 1: had reduced levels of testosterone, and they had reduced self
Speaker 1: rated uh sexual arousal and reduced physiological measures of arousal.
Speaker 1: And so what some headlines did with this is basically
Speaker 1: they went with like the sexual angle and said that, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: tears will make you less attractive. Yeah, that feels like
Speaker 1: a very a specific misread of of what they're trying
Speaker 1: to say here, right, right. So, actually I was reading
Speaker 1: there was a section that covered this in that article
Speaker 1: by Mandy Oaklander that I mentioned a minute ago, and
Speaker 1: it actually went back and interviewed one of the authors
Speaker 1: of that that study in Science, Noam Sobel, who said, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: it really generated some sort of misleading headlines that that
Speaker 1: had the wrong takeaway from it, because even though they
Speaker 1: did find that at least within this one studied emotional
Speaker 1: tears lowered sexual arousal and men, he thinks that the
Speaker 1: real interpretation, the correct interpretation of this finding is that
Speaker 1: is that the chemo signals in this maybe reducing aggression, uh,
Speaker 1: and that that men's tears may also have the same
Speaker 1: effect as women's tears. And so the main takeaway would
Speaker 1: not be that like tears are unattractive. It would be that,
Speaker 1: like tears, if this finding is correct, serve to sort
Speaker 1: of like put other biological draw vibes on hold and
Speaker 1: sort of put put the men who smell them into
Speaker 1: a kind of uh, caregiving mode. Now, one thing that
Speaker 1: when possible issue that this raises for me though, is
Speaker 1: that tears are also shed in rage, you know, so
Speaker 1: one can easily imagine a scenario where if if one
Speaker 1: warrior is coming at another and one warrior, uh, their
Speaker 1: eyes are streaming with tears and their their faces snarling
Speaker 1: like a beast, and they're coming at you with battle axe. Uh.
Speaker 1: Is does that mean the other warrior is going to
Speaker 1: suddenly let their guard down and and have this emotional
Speaker 1: outpouring for the other warrior because tears are present like
Speaker 1: that doesn't really match up for me? No, and it well,
Speaker 1: I mean sure if it does work this way, certainly
Speaker 1: wouldn't be that deterministic. It would just be an influence,
Speaker 1: not like a you know, overriding every other consideration a
Speaker 1: person could have. Though, I mean I would say that, Uh,
Speaker 1: you can imagine even in a context of of people
Speaker 1: of you know, warriors and killers, it seems is harder
Speaker 1: to enact violence maybe on somebody who is crying like that.
Speaker 1: Crying does serve pretty often to sort of neutralize aggression. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but then again, I guess we have to remember
Speaker 1: that it does not occur in a vacuum. Like we
Speaker 1: have the human facial communication array, we have body posture. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you know that is also augmented by us or
Speaker 1: or or non use of tools and weapons, like there's
Speaker 1: there there are a number of other signals that would
Speaker 1: be in place in addition to the tears. Even if
Speaker 1: the tears had this ability to augment what's going on
Speaker 1: with the with the our facial features. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're constantly processing all kinds of signals and information. Tears
Speaker 1: would be one input among many. You know, they might
Speaker 1: have an influence in one way, but you know you
Speaker 1: might be able to ignore that influence if you've got
Speaker 1: strong motivations. Uh. In all this, like, I can't help
Speaker 1: but be reminded of an old Halloween Disney cartoon. Perhaps
Speaker 1: you've seen it, in which there is a paging gorilla
Speaker 1: and um and Donald Duck is there, and the Huey
Speaker 1: Dewy and Louis are there, and they're running around being
Speaker 1: chased by this gorilla. They're they're able to eventually subdue
Speaker 1: the gorilla using tear gas. Tear gas, of course, has
Speaker 1: does not have an emotional context. It isn't It is
Speaker 1: an irritant. But in this cartoon, when the gas of
Speaker 1: the tear, when the tear gas reaches the eyes of
Speaker 1: both Duck and Ape, it produces tears that are then
Speaker 1: instantly emotional tears confusing the categories. Yeah, yeah, there's some
Speaker 1: some some wonderful category confusion there. So anyway, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what I think about the idea of tears as
Speaker 1: chemo signals, though I do feel pretty well convinced that
Speaker 1: there are some kind of signal, and it might be
Speaker 1: a signal of the more the more straightforward kind that
Speaker 1: we were talking about before we're observing them has some
Speaker 1: pretty reliable cognitive effects. People see the tears and react
Speaker 1: in a certain way. And and there are some indications
Speaker 1: also that UM that tears, maybe emotional tears, may be
Speaker 1: specially designed to be seen. Like I was reading in
Speaker 1: one of these articles UM a finding that has alleged
Speaker 1: that emotional tears tend to contain higher protein content than
Speaker 1: um uh than just like basil or reflex tears. Though
Speaker 1: that I'm not sure how well that finding holds up,
Speaker 1: because I might have read that that had been that
Speaker 1: had been contradicted as well. But if that is the case, UM,
Speaker 1: one hypothesized explanation for that is that the additional protein
Speaker 1: content of the tears causes them to be thicker, meaning
Speaker 1: that they take longer to roll down the cheek so
Speaker 1: emotional tears, if this is true, would be more visible
Speaker 1: than just say, like your eyes overflowing with tears because
Speaker 1: they're irritated. Those thinner tears might just sort of wash away,
Speaker 1: whereas the emotion, the thicker emotional tears hang on the
Speaker 1: cheek and sort of stick to your skin and other
Speaker 1: people can see them more easily. Now this is very
Speaker 1: interesting because it brings to mind two different things. One,
Speaker 1: what happens when there is makeup of some sort in
Speaker 1: place on the face, uh, And you can see this,
Speaker 1: you know, across the spectrum any kind of uh makeup
Speaker 1: that might be worn on the face, especially for some
Speaker 1: sort of ritual scenario. And then if there's weeping, it
Speaker 1: has the potential to make the tears all the more apparent.
Speaker 1: And this also reminds me of something I was reading
Speaker 1: in Holy Tears. Apparently there have been accounts of of
Speaker 1: there are various accounts of weeping blood um in in
Speaker 1: in cultures, and there was there's this possibility that there
Speaker 1: there are some mourners that have been reported to have
Speaker 1: engaged in rituals in ancient Turkey where they would score
Speaker 1: their faces um during the ritual before the ritual and anyway,
Speaker 1: the result would be that you would have blood and
Speaker 1: tears mixed together. Uh, thus sort augmenting the tears with
Speaker 1: blood and or or the reverse augmenting the blood with
Speaker 1: tears causing this this increased flow. Well, yeah, and playing
Speaker 1: on the intuition that tears are are meaningful, and they're
Speaker 1: meaningful if they are seen. They're meant to be visually seen,
Speaker 1: and of course the one way to hide them is
Speaker 1: you do you're crying in the rain, right like in
Speaker 1: the Affily Brothers song. Okay, you know, there's one observation
Speaker 1: that I came across that struck me as really interesting.
Speaker 1: This was not from a scientific study. Actually just heard
Speaker 1: this in a video I was watching. So Vox has
Speaker 1: a video series called Glad You Asked that's hosted by
Speaker 1: somebody somebody named Joss Fong, and they had an episode
Speaker 1: on tears, and there was a part in the episode
Speaker 1: where somebody observed that tears are the only body fluid
Speaker 1: that doesn't tend to gross other people out. And that
Speaker 1: struck me as really interesting. So the idea of getting
Speaker 1: somebody else's urine or feces, blood, sweat, spit, mucus, etcetera,
Speaker 1: any of that getting any of that on you most
Speaker 1: of the time people would find all of these options disgusting.
Speaker 1: The the suggestion here is that tears are the only
Speaker 1: fluid secreted by the body that doesn't usually provoke a
Speaker 1: disgust reaction in others. And I don't know of any
Speaker 1: empirical research to back up this observation. It might exist,
Speaker 1: but it does ring true to me, and it strikes
Speaker 1: me as as notable. Yeah, yeah, um, I mean it's hard.
Speaker 1: It's hard to reflect on any actual experience with that.
Speaker 1: I feel like any time that I've gotten, say, my
Speaker 1: son's tears on me, it's almost always been their emotional tears.
Speaker 1: Then there's gonna be mucus as well, you know, so
Speaker 1: in that case it's like, yeah, I probably need to
Speaker 1: change shirts. But but but once you're apparent, you get
Speaker 1: all kinds of fluids on you, and that just I think,
Speaker 1: you know, oh yeah, yeah, from urine and everything else.
Speaker 1: But I guess with you know, with the with the tears,
Speaker 1: I can I can unders understand that. Yeah, I can
Speaker 1: certainly match u, especially when I think about the time
Speaker 1: that he shot tears into my mouth. Um, by virtue
Speaker 1: of his tear Duck situation. At the time, I was
Speaker 1: not it was more interesting as opposed to to a
Speaker 1: gross out moment um. I also was looking around because
Speaker 1: I was thinking, well, maybe there's some notable exception in
Speaker 1: human culture, and I thought I had some like some
Speaker 1: flag came up in my memory of some faint, faint
Speaker 1: example of something where maybe tears had some sort of
Speaker 1: a negative connotation, maybe involved with say like um, you know,
Speaker 1: the pershing of bodily energies or the imbalance of energies.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't find anything. Maybe I'll find something and
Speaker 1: we'll share in the future. But it does seem to
Speaker 1: be pretty universal, and even then it would not I
Speaker 1: don't know if it would necessarily be that the tears
Speaker 1: themselves have any kind of unclean aspect to them. It
Speaker 1: would be something about like the deeper body or the
Speaker 1: or some sort of alleged energy system of the body.
Speaker 1: In the same way, whereas if you if you might
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying this is fair, but if you
Speaker 1: were judgmental of somebody for crying during space jam, um
Speaker 1: adult crying during space jam, you might you might well
Speaker 1: argue that this that they shouldn't have done so, uh,
Speaker 1: that they didn't have proper emotional reason to do so,
Speaker 1: But you wouldn't think anything less with the actual substance
Speaker 1: of their tears, Like, keep those space Jam tears away
Speaker 1: from me, do not let them soil my body. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't trust anybody who did not cry during Space Jam.
Speaker 1: You go, maybe they're the hole of these tears. All. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as long as we're off the subject and reaching the
Speaker 1: end of the podcast, what have you? What do you
Speaker 1: make of old Pinhead saying, um, you know, no, no tears.
Speaker 1: It's a waste of good suffering. I always felt that
Speaker 1: safe old tears. Yeah, I always felt like that was
Speaker 1: a bit off brand, Like what do you what are you?
Speaker 1: What are you expecting to happen? Like I thought pain
Speaker 1: and suffering was your whole bag, but suddenly like crying
Speaker 1: is not allowed. Yeah, at what point does he think
Speaker 1: it's okay for the tears to begin? Yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: kind of closed minded pin it. Well, it is interesting
Speaker 1: that in the context of the movie, these would be uh,
Speaker 1: if it's hell Raiser, these would be anticipatory tears, right,
Speaker 1: tears that are in response to terror at the idea
Speaker 1: of suffering yet to come. And yet there are some
Speaker 1: people who have put forward models of emotional tears that
Speaker 1: sort of say the opposite, that say tears are a
Speaker 1: sort of step down the signal. I'm not sure I'm
Speaker 1: convinced by this actually, but it at least has been alleged.
Speaker 1: I could imagine a scenario. Okay, if you're gonna think
Speaker 1: long and hard about the cenobytes of of Clive Barker
Speaker 1: cell raiser, you could say, well, they're all about actual senses,
Speaker 1: actual senses of of pleasure and pain, and therefore the
Speaker 1: emotional context of pleasure and pain might be completely lost
Speaker 1: on them, because yeah, they're all about like stick and
Speaker 1: hooks and things and and so forth, and and the
Speaker 1: tightening of leather, not so much about anticipating the pain
Speaker 1: or reflecting on the pain. So I don't know, now
Speaker 1: I'm back backtracking. Maybe it is totally on brand, but
Speaker 1: maybe maybe would have been more impactful if if ten
Speaker 1: had had been said something like just to express that
Speaker 1: he doesn't even understand what's happening. What are you doing? Why?
Speaker 1: Why is there liquid coming out of your face? Liquid
Speaker 1: shouldn't be coming out of your body unless it is
Speaker 1: a response to direct physical stimuli. Since I mentioned it,
Speaker 1: I figured I might as well explain the idea of
Speaker 1: the sort of step down theory of tears. Um So.
Speaker 1: I was reading about this in an article in The
Speaker 1: Washington Post from April sixteen by Mary Kim called the
Speaker 1: Science of a Good Cry, and this involved an interview
Speaker 1: with an emeritus professor of psychology at Temple University named J. E. Ron,
Speaker 1: who had advocated what was called in this article a
Speaker 1: two stage theory of emotional tears, which would be kind
Speaker 1: of similar to the two stage theory of laughter, which
Speaker 1: posits that maybe laughter functions when tension is first raised
Speaker 1: by the setup of a joke and then suddenly lowered
Speaker 1: by the punch lines that stepped down to the lower
Speaker 1: level of tension. Under this theory, that causes the laughter
Speaker 1: as the result of a joke. Uh The idea here
Speaker 1: is that maybe crying works in a similar fashion. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I want to read a quote from this article that's
Speaker 1: explaining a friend's view here. Uh. Quote, people experience a
Speaker 1: crying fit when something happens to first spark high anxiety
Speaker 1: or distress, followed by a moment of recalibration or release.
Speaker 1: For instance, a child that loses his mother at the
Speaker 1: grocery store. Begins by frantically searching for her, getting more
Speaker 1: and more worried as he scans the aisles. Suddenly he
Speaker 1: hears her call his name from behind, sees her comforting face,
Speaker 1: and promptly bursts into tears. And uh and uh. It
Speaker 1: goes on to explain how this could maybe also work
Speaker 1: for things that appear to be tears of joy. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe like while you're planning a wedding for your child,
Speaker 1: you know they're there's sort of a high anxiety, high
Speaker 1: stress preparation stage, but then during the ceremony itself, it's
Speaker 1: kind of everything is culminated and then there's a release
Speaker 1: of tension and then you cry. So, according to this
Speaker 1: this hypothesis here, emotional tears would occur not really at
Speaker 1: the onset of distress, but at the onset of relief
Speaker 1: from distress. I'm not sure how convinced I am by this.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how well it lines up with actual
Speaker 1: instances of crying, but it does seem to be somewhat corroborated,
Speaker 1: at least by um what parts of the nervous system
Speaker 1: seem to be activated, like crying does seem to be
Speaker 1: more associated with activation of the parasympathetic nervous system as
Speaker 1: opposed to the sympathetic nervous system. So the sympathetic nervous
Speaker 1: system is what's usually associated with high stress conditions, fight
Speaker 1: or flight, goose bumps, all that kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: then usually when you when you're done with a sympathetic
Speaker 1: nervous system response, you know, the the high stress is subsided,
Speaker 1: you shift back down into activation of the parasympathetic nervous system,
Speaker 1: which is often known as the relax and restore war
Speaker 1: system or the rest and digest system. It's the stuff
Speaker 1: that's uh normal, involuntary activities of the body that are
Speaker 1: happening when you're not in a state of heightened stress
Speaker 1: or anxiety. And this is the system that crying seems
Speaker 1: to be more associated with. Uh So, so that would
Speaker 1: be an interesting indication in favor of this this two
Speaker 1: stage emotional tier theory. But still I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: correctly the theory rings. Just with experience of wind crying
Speaker 1: happens and how it happens. Yeah, I mean, it just
Speaker 1: it becomes so complex when you start trying to tease
Speaker 1: a part you know, emotional and physical responses to you know,
Speaker 1: often you know complex stimuli. That is, you know, this
Speaker 1: is something kind of thing that you know, Pinhead's not
Speaker 1: gonna understand. It's just a it's a it's a tangled
Speaker 1: knot of human emotion. Oh we did, We did get
Speaker 1: set off on that whole thing, but Pinhead didn't. We
Speaker 1: we did, we did. Alright, Well, on that note, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and close out this part two of
Speaker 1: our look at Tears. We are going to come back
Speaker 1: with part three, and I'm excited to get into some
Speaker 1: of the mythological and religious stuff a bit more in
Speaker 1: that one, but there will be a short gap. We
Speaker 1: have a special interview episode that we're excited about that's
Speaker 1: gonna air Tuesday, and then the following Thursday, we should
Speaker 1: be back with Tears Part three. If all goes according
Speaker 1: to plan. Yeah, if it doesn't, that means something changed.
Speaker 1: There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Yes, we'll
Speaker 1: have to get into that. What's with all the teeth gnashing?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe we'll get into that in part three.
Speaker 1: What does nash ing mean? What is it? What is
Speaker 1: it to nash to bite to like grind your teeth?
Speaker 1: I was just imagine that. Yeah, just kind of like
Speaker 1: weeping and just you know, um, so perhaps we should
Speaker 1: explore that, maybe maybe there there's some legs to that question.
Speaker 1: Experts on gnashing right in. Yeah, all right. If you
Speaker 1: want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind, you'll find them all on the Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind podcast feed, which you can find wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcast. We have core episodes in two
Speaker 1: season Thursdays, Artifact on Wednesday, listener Mail on Monday, Weird
Speaker 1: House set Him on Friday. That's when we just kick
Speaker 1: back and discuss a weird movie, and then on the
Speaker 1: weekend we have a rerun of a core episode. Huge
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow your
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