Women’s tears contain chemicals that reduce aggression in men. Shani Agronová from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel described it in her study, which was published in the scientific journal PLOS. Research has shown that inhaling the scent of tears has been shown to reduce brain activity associated with aggression.
Scientists have previously shown that in some species of rodents, male aggression decreases when they are exposed to female tears in an experiment. This phenomenon belongs to the so-called social chemosignaling, which is a process that, although commonly found in animals, either does not exist in humans or is not yet well understood.
And so a team of Israeli scientists decided to check it out. The way their experiment worked was that the experimenters had two men play a game against each other. At the same time, they released scents into their surroundings – either a solution of women’s tears or a physiological solution. Test subjects had no idea what scent they were smelling. The game was designed to induce aggressive behavior towards the other player because the researchers manipulated it to make it appear as if the opponent was cheating. Players could then take revenge on opponents in the game.
Aggressive revenge-seeking behavior during the game was shown to decrease by more than forty percent when contestants were exposed to the scent of tears. The scientists then examined some of the men using magnetic resonance imaging. It showed that two areas of the brain related to aggression activated more when the men were provoked by an opponent during the game, but in the same situations where they smelled tears, the activation was significantly weaker.
The greater the difference in this brain activity, the less often the player retaliated during the game. According to the authors, this link between tears, brain activity and aggressive behavior suggests that social chemosignaling is a significant factor in human aggression. “We found that, as in mice, human tears contain a chemical signal that blocks male-specific aggression,” the authors added.
2024-01-03 05:49:34
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