In Women’s Tears, a Chemical That Says, ‘Not Tonight, Dear’

Drum roll please! From the “things we already know without scientific evidence” category: Women’s tears are not a turn on to men.  (Gasp).  Every straight man I know has found the nature of this discovery to be, well, hilariously unsurprising, although researchers appear to be a bit puzzled.

What interests me most about this study, however, is that the researchers had assumed that chemical signals from tears would trigger sadness or empathy in others. But initial experiments found that sniffing women’s tears did not affect men’s mood or empathy – the only impact they found was on their sexual arousal.

Hmm.  That part’s a bit disappointing.

-Nicole

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/science/07tears.html?_r=1&ref=global-home