What Does Crying Have To Do With Business?
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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. Click here to continue reading »”What Does Crying Have To Do With Business?”
