Have you ever wondered why humans are the only animals that cry? Of course, by crying I’m not referring to the physiological response that occurs when you actually have something in your eye. Instead, I’m talking about what researchers call “emotional tears”, or crying that is associated with an emotional reaction like sadness or frustration. A recent study by researchers at the University of Maryland has certainly helped to shed some light into this uniquely human behaviour.
Dr. Robert Provine and his team created an experiment where they showed 80 students a series of images showing the faces of people with tears in their eyes or running down their cheeks. The research team also included in this series of images copies of these same pictures after the tears were digitally removed, along with photos of people with other types of facial expression. As the study subjects viewed the images, they were asked to rate them on a scale of 1 to 7 as to how sad the person in the picture appeared, not knowing that some pictures were digitally altered to remove any signs that there were tears on the face.
While the study subjects overwhelmingly identified faces with tears as being the saddest, the research team discovered that those same faces with the tears removed were viewed as demonstrating “awe, concern, contemplation or puzzlement, not simply of less sadness”. These results lead Provine and his team to conclude that emotional tears helped to remove any ambiguity about a person’s emotional state and serve as “a visual signal of sadness”.
The study’s findings are certainly intriguing and hopefully, it will spur more research in order to better understand this emotionally-related physiological response. In the meantime, there are some important insights that should cause us to reconsider what role emotions should play in the workplace.
It’s a common expectation of most organizations that employees keep their emotions in check while at work; that it’s unprofessional to be anything but purely rational while on the job. And often any displays of an emotional response are quickly dispensed with a dismissive remark of “that’s enough of that; it’s time to get serious now”.
And yet, emotions play a very pivotal role in both how we conduct our business and how our customers choose to interact with us. Businesses know all too well that their customers aren’t going to buy their products/services based solely on a rational assessment. It’s for this reason many sales people learn about the importance of empathy and relatability, if not also why car salesman are able to sell more cars by manipulating a customer’s sense of reciprocity.
What’s more, our sense of creativity and ability to innovate is derived not from the vantage point of rationality, but from tapping into that wellspring of emotions from which our imagination and ability to dream up new possibilities arise. And now, thanks this study by Provine and his team, we can also appreciate how the display of tears can help to clarify our understanding of a person’s emotional state and with it, the context of what they are trying to impart to us.
Of course, I’m not saying that we should encourage our employees to be blubbering messes while at work as that’s simply swinging the pendulum to the other extreme regarding the presence of emotions in the workplace. But the results of this study makes it clear how critical the role emotions play in our ability to effectively communicate messages or ideas to those around us. Consider, for example, how many times an email’s content gets misconstrued by the recipient because they can’t adequately interpret the emotional meaning behind the message. Even verbal communications can be confused because we interpret ‘tones’ or underlying messages within the words being spoken by others.
The fact that in this study, subjects were so easily confused as to the individual’s state of mind as a result of the removal of some tears helps to reinforce the importance that emotions play in not only how we relate to others, but to the accuracy of how we decipher information without an emotional context. Indeed, this study serves to lend more weight to the reality that businesses need to embrace fostering a more personal, emotional environment to the benefit of both their organization as well as their employees.
And for those who are wondering what’s the reason why people cry, the answer is quite simple. It’s because we’re human.