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 presented with four pictures out of 100 possible targets with or without digitally-added tears. We confirmed the main prediction that seeing a tearful individual elicits the intention to support, d = 0.49 [0.43, 0.55]. Our data suggest that this effect could be mediated by perceiving the crying target as warmer and more helpless, feeling more connected, as well as feeling more empathic concern for the crier, but not by an increase in personal distress of the observer. The effect was moderated by the situational valence, identifying the target as part of one's group, and trait empathic concern. A neutral situation, high trait empathic concern, and low identification increased the effect. We observed high heterogeneity across countries that was, via split-half validation, best explained by country-level GDP per capita and subjective well-being with stronger effects for higher-scoring countries. These findings suggest that tears can function as social glue, providing one possible explanation why emotional crying persists into adulthood.</p

A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world

Understanding lay conceptions of workplace criers: a prototype analysis

Crying has been argued to be the most intense emotional expression in the workplace, and observers’ conceptions of workplace criers can impact important employee outcomes, such as their collaborative relations with co-workers, performance evaluations, and career progression. Despite this, prior assessments of such conceptions have been limited to several crier features pre-selected by scholars (e.g., warmth, competence), rendering observers’ range of conceptions largely unexamined. Scholars also posit that observers naturalistically ascribe certain features to workplace criers faster than others (e.g., emotionality before competence), which suggests how some features might be better descriptors of criers than others. This, however, has not been verified in extant literature. These issues present crucial gaps in this nascent area of research, and potentially compromise validity when subsequently predicting downstream consequences for workplace criers. They also suggest that the concept of workplace criers is prototypically organised, comprising an extensive range of crier features where some are more central to the concept than others. To investigate this possibility, four studies utilising the prototype approach were conducted with full-time employees in Singapore. In Study 1 (n = 163), participants freely listed their conceptions of workplace criers, which were coded into 51 features of differing frequency. Study 2 (n = 97) comprised a prototypicality rating task, where participants judged how well each feature characterised workplace criers. A wide distribution of ratings emerged, which was comparable to those of previously examined prototype concepts. Features receiving high prototypicality ratings were thereafter classified as central to workplace criers, while features receiving low prototypicality ratings were classified as peripheral. Prototypicality ratings were also positively related to the feature frequencies obtained in Study 1, supporting the notion that feature prototypicality is associated with ease of recall. Next, a reaction time (RT) task in Study 3 (n = 162) showed that participants were quicker to confirm central features (e.g., “Stressed”, “Sensitive”) as typical of workplace criers, compared to peripheral features (e.g., “Incompetent”, “Unmotivated”). Moreover, they were quicker to disconfirm peripheral features as typical of workplace criers, compared to central features. These findings corroborated the prototype structure by demonstrating its impact on implicit cognition. Lastly, in further examining central features of workplace criers, an RT task in Study 4 (n = 107) assessed if individual central features were implicitly gendered in nature (i.e., whether each feature would be more rapidly associated with a male or female workplace crier). Results did not support the gendered nature of central features. Collectively, this thesis explicates how lay conceptions of workplace criers are extensive and prototypically organised, through i) observers’ range of ascribed, crier-centric features, and ii) their evaluations of feature prototypicality, which systematically influence implicit cognition. Implications for research examining the interpersonal effects of crying at work are discussed.Doctor of Philosoph

Exploring the relationship between attitude similarity, likeability,and construal of student leaders

The similarity-attraction link has received largely consistent support across decades, with prior research on organizational leadership demonstrating how similarity positively influences employees' appraisals of their supervisors and facilitates leader-member exchanges (LMX). However, little research has applied this similarity-attraction link in understanding how similarity impacts perceptions of student leaders within a college context, where student body elections are common practice. Drawing on Construal Level Theory (CLT), this research explored how attitude similarity influenced undergraduates' likeability and mental representations of their student leaders. 124 undergraduates were presented with a hypothetical student leader who held either similar or dissimilar attitudes from them on a number of pertinent school issues. Additionally, information about the leader was framed either in terms of general character traits (high-level construal condition), or contextualized behaviours (low-level construal condition). Participants then completed a Leader Evaluation Scale (LES), which was an overall measure of likeability towards the leader. While analyses revealed significant effects of attitude similarity and construal level on likeability of student leaders, CLT was unsupported in this context. Results obtained support previous research conducted in this direction, and reinforce the integral role of attitude similarity in promoting positive first impressions towards student leaders in college

Low residential mobility and novelty-seeking consumption

Cultural research using a socioecological perspective has shown that residential mobility fosters familiarity-seeking behavior. In particular, residentially mobile individuals tend to purchase from national chain stores, which offer the same products across different locations. Positing this process as a reaction to a rapidly changing high mobility environment, we investigated whether a low mobility environment—characterized by a more familiar, less stimulating environment—results in novelty-seeking consumptive behaviors. In testing our hypothesis, Study 1 used archival data to explore novelty-seeking consumption based on the sales of consumable brands in the United States, Japan, and Singapore. Study 2 primed participants with either a high or a low mobility mind-set to explore the effect of mobility on novelty-seeking consumption. The results supported our hypothesis that consumers in a relatively low mobility country (Japan) tend to purchase from newer and, thus, novel brands more than consumers in mobile countries (the United States or Singapore). Furthermore, compared with high mobility, priming participants with a low mobility mind-set led them to select novel over traditional products.Ministry of Education (MOE)Accepted versionThis research was supported in part by an NTU Start-Up Grant and MOE AcRF Tier 1 Grant, M4011406 awarded to K.I

Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries

From Elsevier via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: accepted 2021-03-18, epub 2021-04-13, issue date 2021-07-31Article version: AMPublication status: PublishedFunder: National Science Centre, Poland; FundRef: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100004281; Grant(s): 2015/19/D/HS6/00641, 2019/35/B/HS6/00528Funder: Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange; Grant(s): PPN/BEK/2019/1/00092/DEC/1Funder: Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology; Grant(s): UID/PSI/03125/2020Funder: Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office; Grant(s): FK128614Funder: Hungarian Brain Research Programme; Grant(s): 2017-1.2.1-NKP-2017-00002Funder: Open University of Israel; FundRef: https://doi.org/10.13039/100008509; Grant(s): 509993-2018Tearful 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 presented with four pictures out of 100 possible targets with or without digitally-added tears. We confirmed the main prediction that seeing a tearful individual elicits the intention to support, d = 0.49 [0.43, 0.55]. Our data suggest that this effect could be mediated by perceiving the crying target as warmer and more helpless, feeling more connected, as well as feeling more empathic concern for the crier, but not by an increase in personal distress of the observer. The effect was moderated by the situational valence, identifying the target as part of one's group, and trait empathic concern. A neutral situation, high trait empathic concern, and low identification increased the effect. We observed high heterogeneity across countries that was, via split-half validation, best explained by country-level GDP per capita and subjective well-being with stronger effects for higher-scoring countries. These findings suggest that tears can function as social glue, providing one possible explanation why emotional crying persists into adulthood

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 presented with four pictures out of 100 possible targets with or without digitally-added tears. We confirmed the main prediction that seeing a tearful individual elicits the intention to support, d = 0.49 [0.43, 0.55]. Our data suggest that this effect could be mediated by perceiving the crying target as warmer and more helpless, feeling more connected, as well as feeling more empathic concern for the crier, but not by an increase in personal distress of the observer. The effect was moderated by the situational valence, identifying the target as part of one's group, and trait empathic concern. A neutral situation, high trait empathic concern, and low identification increased the effect. We observed high heterogeneity across countries that was, via split-half validation, best explained by country-level GDP per capita and subjective well-being with stronger effects for higher-scoring countries. These findings suggest that tears can function as social glue, providing one possible explanation why emotional crying persists into adulthood