Study: Men Become Less Aggressive When They Smell Women’s Tears

A common scene in soap operas and films is a male who notices a lady crying and is quite uncomfortable. They often go above and above to keep her from crying. Though it may seem corny, have you ever considered if men’s actions when a woman tears have any scientific significance? According to a new study, men’s hostility may be reduced by scent-borne compounds discovered in women’s tears. Studies that were published in the Journal of PLOS Biology revealed that scent-borne compounds found in women’s tears prevent males from becoming aggressive. According to the study, men’s brain activity associated with aggressiveness decreased when they smelled those tears, which inevitably led to less violent behavior.

Lab rats were used in an experiment to demonstrate how the aroma of female tears may deter male violence. Social chemo signaling is the term used to describe this kind of scent-based communication. Although rats were used in this research, two individuals participated in a comparable experiment where they were forced to play a game meant to incite aggression. One of the guys in the experiment was given the opportunity to get retribution by making the other man lose money after being made to feel that the other man was cheating. The guys were either given placebo saline water or women’s emotional tears at random throughout this time. Since none of the males had an odor, they had no idea what they were smelling. It was shown that when males scented women’s tears instead of saline, the hostile, revenge-seeking behavior decreased by more than 40%.

Similar to mice, human tears include a chemical signal that “blocks conspecific male aggression,” according to study by Shani Agron of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Additionally, he argued that the outcome refutes the idea that “emotional tears are uniquely human.”

The men’s brain areas linked to violence, the prefrontal cortex and anterior insula, were active when they provoked one another and desired to exact vengeance by causing the other to lose money, according to a repetition of the experiment conducted in an MRI scanner. However, these brain regions did not become particularly active when they were exposed to the women’s tears. During the experimental game, the player’s inclination to pursue vengeance decreased with increasing differences in brain activity.