An empirical article by Leigh Ann Vaughn and 142 other researchers around the world was published on April 13 in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The lead researcher was Janis Zickfeld (Aarhus University, Denmark).
Professor Vaughn and her undergraduate research team enjoyed this project. She developed the IRB proposal for Ithaca College, managed data collection here, and helped write the paper. Her research team student recruited participants, helped trouble-shoot the Ithaca College laboratory procedure, and collected data for the project. The project asked participants to rate their emotional responses and behavioral intentions toward pictures of faces with or without digitally added tears. Over 7000 people at 41 institutions on every inhabited continent participated.
The major finding was cross-cultural support for the tendency of tears to evoke the intention to offer social support. These findings suggest that tears can function as social glue, providing one possible explanation why emotional crying persists into adulthood.
The article is available here: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1cv6T51f8hFUw