A new study finds that sniffing women’s tears can reduce aggression in men.
- Women’s tears contain chemicals that block aggression in men, a new study suggests.
- Aggressive behavior drops by more than 40% among men who have smelled women’s tears.
- For researchers, this phenomenon would be linked to a mechanism based on the structural and functional overlap of the brain substrates of olfaction and aggressiveness.
Women’s tears contain chemicals that block aggression in men. This is what the work of researcher Shani highlights Agron of the Institute of Sciences Weizmann.
His discovery is detailed in an article published in the open access journal PLOS Biologyon December 21, 2023.
Women’s tears reduce aggressive behavior by 40 %
It is known that male rodents become less aggressive when they smell female tears. This phenomenon ofcomplex interaction between olfactory signals and certain behaviors is called “social chemosignal”. To determine whether tears could have the same effect in humans, researchers exposed a group of men to women’s tears or a saline solution while they played a game. The latter was designed to provoke aggressive behavior towards the other player. Participants were led to believe that their opponent was cheating, and that they had – at certain times – the possibility of taking revenge by making him lose money.
In this experiment, the team noticed that aggressive, revenge-based behaviors dropped by more than 40% after men sniffed female tears.
MRI exams have also revealed that two brain regions linked to aggression – the cortex prefrontal and theinsula anterior – were more active when volunteers were provoked during play. On the other hand, these areas were much less so when they had felt tears.
“Individually, the greater the difference in this brain activity, the less the player retaliates during the game”specify the authors in the press release published on December 21.
Tears : a chemical signal involved in the drop in aggression masculine
For researchers, finding this link between tears, brain activity and male behavior implies that the “social chemosignal” also influences human aggressiveness, and is not “not just an animal curiosity.”
They conclude their study by explaining: “Taken together, our results imply that, as in rodents, a tear-related chemical signal decreases male aggression, a mechanism that likely relies on the structural and functional overlap of the brain substrates of olfaction and aggression. We suggest that tears are a mammalian-level mechanism that provides a chemical cover protecting against insults.”.
