Sniffing Women's Tears Reduces Aggressive Behavior In Men -- Public Library of Science

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esearchers discover that just like in mice, human tears contain a chemical signal that blocks conspecific male aggression. Credit: British Library, Unsplash (CC0, creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)Researchers discover that just like in mice, human tears contain a chemical signal that blocks male aggression. Credit: British Library, Unsplash (CC0, creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

Public Library of Science -- MedicalXpress

Dec. 21, 2023

New research, published in PLOS Biology, shows that tears from women contain chemicals that block aggression in men.

The study led by Shani Agron at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, finds that sniffing tears leads to reduced brain activity related to aggression, which results in less aggressive behavior.

Male  in rodents is known to be blocked when they smell female . This is an example of social chemosignaling, a process that is common in animals but less common—or less understood—in humans.

To determine whether tears have the same effect in people, the researchers exposed a group of men to either women's emotional tears or saline while they played a two-person game. The game was designed to elicit  against the other player, whom the men were led to believe was cheating.

When given the opportunity, the men could get revenge on the other player by causing them to lose money. The men did not know what they were sniffing and could not distinguish between the tears or the saline, which were both odorless.

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