0000000000282503
AUTHOR
Jana B. Berkessel
The Psychological Science Accelerator’s COVID-19 rapid-response dataset
Funder: Amazon Web Services (AWS) Imagine Grant
Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries
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 limited generalizability. This project examined the tears-social support intentions effect and possible mediating and moderating variables in a fully pre-registered study across 7007 participants (24,886 ratings) and 41 countries spanning all populated continents. Participants were prese…