Why when women cry, men’s brains lose interest in sex

Are you an emotional crier? Most women are. Sometimes the tears are from sadness, sorrow, memories of loss, feelings of happiness and joy and for things that we don’t know how explain. It is also one of those things that confound men. 

But for researchers, a woman’s tears are full of possibilities. According to neurobiologist, Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science, emotional tears are chemically different from reflexive tears – the kind the come from any kind of eye irritant.  Emotional tears appear to function as chemical signals. 

But, what kind of chemical signal are women’s tears sending to men? It seems the verbal language translation is “no” or “not tonight dear.”  

When 50 men were tested, they were asked to sniff both real tears and bogus tears of saline solution dripped down the faces of women. The idea behind having men sniff the tears, it seems that the nose is very sensitive to the chemical difference of emotional tears.  

Here’s what Sobel found out when he tested men with tears from women — 

• By sniffing alone, men could distinguish the difference between real and bogus tears 
• When asked to rate photographs of women, men who sniffed real tears, rated them less sexually attractive as compared to rating those when sniffing bogus tears 
• The testosterone level dropped when men sniffed real tears but not bogus ones 
• When their brains were scanned in a MRI after sniffing real tears and then watching a sad movie, the sexual arousal areas of the brain had less neural activity
• Men did not become more empathetic after sniffing real tears. 

The best researchers can interpret from this phenomena is that a woman’s tears is a way to signal men a lack of sexual interest or dissuade aggressiveness. 

On the other hand, this research tells women not to expect much male empathy when there’s a reason to have a good cry.

Sources: Women’s tears tank men’s libido Men who sniffed such tears produced less testosterone and found female faces less arousing, according to new research. by Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/07/health/la-he-womens-tears-20110107