Exactly what I was thinking.

What a very odd take on this research. (I'm guessing the researchers are right now slapping their foreheads and saying I'll never talk to another reporter).

Duh?

Ap-- why would they be offended in any way from this article? The conclusion of their study was that:

“women’s emotional tears contain a chemosignal that reduces sexual arousal in men.”

Did you even read the article, or just the headline?

Yeah. Silly me, standing on a street corner weeping the other day, thinking it would get me some hot dates. Next they'll be telling us that men don't find it sexy when a woman is cleaning out the cat's litter box or clipping her toenails.

But neither of those actions contain neurochemical compounds that illicit that response. Tears do. Read the article again and stop being offended because someone dared to suggest you have sex appeal.

WG, don't get sarcasm?

Most people here are missing the point that this is research about deterring rapists and sex offenders... not dating. Thank you to the reporter who came up with the nifty title for the article and obviously had no clue what he was reporting on.

WMG: you missed the point. The study is about the chemical in tears causing a chemical reaction in others, not about women manipulating that reaction for or against to gain sexual attractiveness.

The mistake is the reporter's misguided (and sexist) nterpretation of the science, not the science. (sexist because the chemical reaction they're studying relates to both sexes. The only reason they studied women's tears is because they volunteered more readily for this. They're studying men's tears next because they know they carry the same chemicals in their tears.) The study had nothing to do with romantic laisons resulting from tears (or no tears).

This kind of silly writing is exactly why you often see a study printed with people commenting afterwards that they can't believe they wasted taxpayer dollars for it. The science is good. The story is silly.

I don't think it will drive off a rapist. I won't say all but for the vast majority of rapist. It is about dominating someone else not about being sexually attracted to them. I guess maybe it could help with date rape, but I would rather my daughters and wife use mace/pepper spray.

Agreed WH

One might reasonably assume that a woman being raped might be producing tears of her own...which seem to have no effect on the rapist.

Here's a good report on the research that totally slams this guy for his bad interpretation: bit.ly/h1AEDG

Other researchers also have detected proteins associated with emotions: They've found dopamine and serotonin in tears, as well as prolactin, the desire-squelching hormone that spikes right after a man ejaculates and sends him running to watch SportsCenter rather than sticking around to cuddle.

LOL!

I haven't read all the comments, but I guess the next question might be... do those chemicals affect different men in different ways....ie....do tears actually turn a rapist on, while diminishing desire in "normal" men?

Lee - like, duh -

That's what science is about: collecting data. How would a single woman know this? Her casual gossip session with girlfriends? Her keen sense of intuition, the same sense that brings intangible benefits to corporations that are forced to
"diversify"?

Women have an arsenal of tools to manipulate men. It's great to read that men are applying science to educate other men.

WMG: read this post and you'll understand exacctly how this story contributes to misunderstanding. Vincent here is actually going to try to argue that science backs up his mysogeny.

Her keen sense of intuition, the same sense that brings intangible benefits to corporations that are forced to "diversify"?

Actually Vincent, being forced to "diversify" has brought extremely tangible benefits to corporations, in the form of greater immunity from the recession. According to Forbes: "The fewer female managers a company has, the greater drop in its share price since January 2008."

A typical male viewpont - that all that is on every woman's mind relates to HIM - worries about being sexy to attract him! every single second of her life, evil plans to manipulate him - what if she simply feels pain (and being around the guy who wrote this, I am sure she does) and crying happens to be a healthy, honest way to express that? Not to mention, to communicate very directly the fact that his behavior is hurtful and in the case of this fool of a writer - probably destructive. SEXIST is right, that absolutely expresses the gross bias in this viewpoint. Not to mention the fact the the word CHICK is GROSSLY sexist. A chick is a tiny, cute, infant chicken with an infinitesimal brain - easily squashed by any boot. Cute and fluffy - but grows up to be chicken breasts, hello!!! Like calling women's breasts a 'rack' - the antlers on a deer some lunatic has just shot! We ALL need to be as conscious of the destructiveness of sexism, as aware as we are to the viciousness of racism! They are both forms of hatred, and hatred destroys.

My belief is that since mating behavior trumps everything it is quite possible that the women's tears may denote that she is not a good candidate to carry a child (if that would be a result of her mating with her partner) and that her possible unstable emotional state may cause the male to not choose her to mate with.

Usually, when I'm crying, the last thing I'm thinking about is whether my husband finds me "hot" or not!

Great, now my girlfriend is going to cry - and then cry harder because she thinks I don't find her sexy while she cries!

Thanks MSNBC for ruining another Friday night!

Amen Emily - not to put to fine a point on it - manipulative women are very high maintence. period. What man with any grey cells want very high maintence?

Thank you, differnet! My sentiments, w/o tears, exactly. I'm sure those scientists were aghast at this juvenille fluff.

Why would they be aghast? Their study was quite specifically about the chemical signal within tears that detract from male sexual desire-- hence the sniffing of tears (and the control: fake tears) followed by viewing of arousing photography. I mean, did you read the @!$%#ing article? The scientists' conclusion was that:

“women’s emotional tears contain a chemosignal that reduces sexual arousal in men.”

Way to prove your inability to read... or maybe your just proving your ability to be constantly offended by absolutely anything that suggests women as sexual beings.

WMG - yeah, we know what the article says. Discerning, differnet, AP and Tracey are annoyed by the patronising tone of the article, not by any perceived mishandling of the science. The science is clear enough. The article is irritating and poorly-written.

Female manipulations need to be understood. Of course, as with pornography, women object to any demystification of femininity, including DNA paternity tests.

Oh and men aren't manipulative at all. Geesh! Or when men manipulate is it just out-right lying.

WMG: re-read. You're REALLY missing the point.

Mr. Denali---how does porn "demystify" women?

To everyone:

Thank you for your (mostly) non-antagonistic corrections. I get that the article is written from a poorly conceived slant, but there are plenty of people on here posting objections to the science, which is what I am defending. AP-- I don't believe I missed the point at all. The researchers' stated conclusion was pretty specific.

You're doing it wrong.

> turned out the women was pregnant

> women was

There. That's all you needed. Would've saved the XHTML generator quite a few line breaks...

also, "... comprised of saline." "Comprised" doesn't need "of" -- it should read "comprising."

Sigh. I really hate how major news outlets are just getting sloppier.

Well, studies have shown that men who help with housework can be a turn-on for many women :)

It also doesn't hurt to have loads of cash.

That's strange. I do TONS of housework and NONE of it seems to attract the ladies.

Well, darn.All that wasted effort learning to cook.

Not, it doesn't hurt, WG, not if you're into that kind of woman.

Total crock of sheot. I'm working from home today, doing laundry and cleaning the kitchen. When my wife gets home she'll go right over to the TV and watch her TIVO'd soaps, eat and go to bed. Nothing is more attractive to men than neglect.

I can't think of a greater turn-off than a women with 'enhanced' breasts. The size of a woman's breasts have very little to do with whether I find her attractive or not.

@sundiver-That's true. I'm a woman, but I do know that men hate fake breasts, and it's because they're only appealing to one sense, which is the sight. But they feel terrible. At least real ones have movement, and softness, and feeling. Keep your bosoms real, ladies.

Actually, most of us find that in order to attract men for sex, we need only have a pulse and two X chromosomes.

You're flattering yourself by thinking that every woman with fake boobs would be interested in dating you and your ego. That's SO hot. (pfft.)

Swing and a miss.

Ignore WMG, writer. Women cry all the time around him, and he has yet to figure out why.

Wow, Tracey, resulting to personal attacks? Someone is insecure...

It furthers our knowledge of human biochemistry, which is never a waste of time. The article, however, is five minutes of my life I'll never get back.

News flash- Whining doesn't turn men on either.

News flash, self-important jerks are a turn off for women, WMG.

Trying to get men fired doesn't turn them on either.

Some of the male reactions to the postings under this article are PRICELESS. Can you spell

I-N-S-E-C-U-R-I-T-Y?

Tracey-- see my response to your personal attack above.

WMG, I think we all see whose insecure here and it's not Tracey.

I don't find it offensive.

I found it rather amusing.

Oh, and I'm a chick so what?

Sure he talks about the use of sexual imagery within the study, however it was for a comparison in reactions under two different states.

This study isn't suprising.

Take a step outside of yourself, it's only an article. Why get into a fit over it.

Take it to these people->http://guerrillagirls.com/

Not like people have gone on whinning and complaining of the female figure nude portrayed in the Art World over several decades.

Thank you for your rational position, Light Weaver. I checked out the link-- cool.

Oh. My. God.

Read the study.

This is a neurochemical study about the ability of tears, divorced from the visual element of a woman crying, having a (now) proven, physical effect on the male brain. They were sniffing tears, for @!$%#s sake. The scientists had a hypothesis that a woman crying would cause men to lose the ability to be aroused, even when confronted by arousing pictures of women-- again, divorced from the visual elements associated with a crying female. They just proved that women's emotional tears have a physical effect on the male brain, and all you can think about is how "sexist" the study was?

Get a life. Stop being offended.

To WMG-21: I think they have read it. That is not the problem. The problem is they don't understand or accurately define what they read.

No, look at the comments both of you. The complaints are about the little asides thrown in with the study.

Amen to that Nate.

WMG,

I have no problem with the study and I never said that I did. However, I do have a problem with this writers attitude. Your tone suggests to me that you're not very old, so 'respect' is probably a foreign concept to you. I advise you to learn it. No man has the right to treat a lady like an object. They are not play things that can be used whenever men want to have fun. "Stop the waterworks, ladies. Crying chicks aren't sexy." This headline is tacky and insulting. There is a name for the act of a man telling a woman not to cry because he finds it un-atractive: emotional abuse.

It's just an article why bother whining about it. It's just a provocative voice.

Take it with a grain of salt.

Then again I read the Onion. I guess I do have a sense of humor to take things at a non-personal level.

Nate-- I'm almost 30, so I'm not a "kid" and I do have respect-- most preeminently for scientists and researchers who progress our understanding of the world. I do not have respect for mommy-coddled, thin-skinned irrationals who are offended by a writer's provocative language. It got you to read the article, didn't it?

WMG,

I'm seventeen and I plan to go to college and become a psychologist, so I do not respect those who take good scientific information and write about it in a way that undermines it's value. The author of this article not only left out information about the study, but he wrote about it as if the point of the study was to prove that crying women were not 'sexy'. The headline was extremely distasteful and the only reason I read the article was because it was listed in the 'science' section of the news.

Yeah...when my close friend died last year, I cried because I was trying to manipulate some man. Get. A. Life. Bitterness is not an acceptable response to constant rejection.

WMG: very few, if any, of the comments are dissing the actual science in any way. They're dissing the sexist, cliche, and downright disgusting way that the author of this write-up of it decided to "spin" the paper. Go see the write up by Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science for an example of how to showcase how cool the study was without insinuating that women are manipulative whores whose every action is to somehow seduce men.

But you, and "any" woman, would be unlikely to describe the chemical compound inherent in emotional tears that illicit this physical reaction in men. Just because the end result is obvious does not mean that the mechanisms at work necessarily are.

WMG: keep trying and you'll get there. The science being studied is about the purpose of these compounds in our emotional tears, a very big stretch from where the writer takes this: 'hold your tears ladies'. Are you getting this now? It's not the science being reacted to here. It's the interpretation of the science through a very silly lens.

AP-- I understand, really I do. But this gal Crystal began her comment with:

And scientists spent time and money on this crap?

Which is a direct antagonism against the researchers and the science being developed by them. Far from being offended by the author's slant, she has decided to deride the content of the research itself.

Your needless outrage and political hackmanship has been noted.

Amen to that Tater - [may i comment on taught - hmmmmm :) ]

Kate: At the time I picked this name I was feeling very "taut". :)

WMG on tauter's comment: As well as off topic. o.o Okay? so he cried, it happens? Big Deal?