But probably not in the way you might think it does. The NY Times has a news article based on research published in this week's Science on the effect of "sniffing" women's tears (shed to, say, a "tear jerker" of a movie like "Terms of Endearment") on men's responses on a variety of measures. For the NY Times article, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/science/07tears.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha3&pagewanted=all
Perhaps the following quotes best summarizes the point of the research: |The researchers accidentally happened upon the evidence that women’s |tears make men feel as if they have taken a cold shower. | |They had assumed chemical signals from tears would trigger sadness or |empathy in others. But initial experiments found that sniffing women’s tears |did not affect men’s mood or empathy, but “had a pronounced influence |on sexual arousal, a surprise,” Dr. Sobel said. And |In several experiments, researchers found that men who sniffed drops |of women’s emotional tears became less sexually aroused than when |they sniffed a neutral saline solution that had been dribbled down |women’s cheeks. While the studies were not large, the findings showed |up in a variety of ways, including testosterone levels, skin responses, |brain imaging and the men’s descriptions of their arousal. Not addressed in the NY Times article is whether rapists have the same response. My feeling is that they may not but it's an empirical questions. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7735 or send a blank email to leave-7735-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
