Tears may send a sexual message in addition to an emotional one, study finds

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 6, 2011

Tears mean a lot of things in the drama of human interaction. They telegraph heartbreak, hopelessness, anger, frustration, elation and relief. They express mood - and can alter behavior - in an instant.

But it turns out there might be more to know about tears, which historically have interested poets more than scientists.

A team of Israeli researchers believes that tears, in addition to everything else they convey, send a sexual message that can be summarized as: "Now's not a good time." In a study published online Thursday by the journal Science, the researchers report that men who sniff tears cried by sad women experience a temporary decline in both sexual arousal and circulating testosterone, a hormone tied to libido.

"We've identified that there is a chemo-signal in human tears," said Noam Sobel, the researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science who headed the study.

(More here.)