People cry for various reasons and in numerous situations, some involving highly moral aspects such as altruism or moral beauty. At the same time, criers have been found to be evaluated as more morally upright—they are perceived as more honest, reliable, and sincere than non-criers. The current project provides a first comprehensive investigation to test whether this perception is adequate. Across six studies sampling Dutch, Indian, and British adults (N = 2325), we explored the relationship between self-reported crying proneness and moral judgments and behavior, employing self-report measures and actual behavior assessments. Across all studies, we observed positive correlations of crying proneness with moral judgments (r = .27 [.17, .38]) and prosocial behavioral tendencies and behaviors (r = .20 [.12, .28]). These associations held in three (moral judgment) or two (prosocial tendencies and behaviors) out of five studies when controlling for other important variables. Thus, the current project provides first evidence that crying is related to moral evaluation and behavior, and we discuss its importance for the literature on human emotional crying.
People who visibly cry are typically evaluated as more morally upright, that is, more honest or reliable. Despite such attributions, it is unclear whether individuals who are more likely to shed tears in fact also show higher moral judgements and behavior. This project tests the association between self-reported crying proneness and moral evaluations and behavior. Meta-analyzing six studies suggests that people who are more prone to cry also place a higher focus on morality in their judgements and actions, an association that could not be fully explained by other variables such as increased emotionality or social desirability.
A classical conception argues that only
However, there is hardly any evidence of whether these judgments are overall appropriate—are people who are more prone to cry indeed more likely to act in morally right ways? Are frequent tears associated with a greater willingness to display prosocial behavior and a greater tendency to disapprove of moral transgressions?
Definitions and theorizations of
The importance of emotional responses in moral evaluations and behavior has been emphasized repeatedly (
Human emotional crying represents an expressive behavior that can accompany various emotions and situations (
Is emotional crying associated with moral judgment or behavior, or does it relate to more specific aspects of morality? Some theories have proposed different moral domains. For example, moral foundation theory (
There is quite consistent evidence that tears convey the image of adequate moral functioning. Across two studies manipulating visual tears on photographs, it was found that tearful individuals were perceived as more sincere and honest (
Considering the link between emotional crying and moral emotions and the social information about emotional crying, we hypothesized that individuals who are more prone to shedding emotional tears should be more likely to and/or more strongly reject moral transgressions and should show higher tendencies to engage in prosocial behavior. Specifically, we hypothesized that:
H1: Crying proneness is positively associated with the disapproval of moral transgressions and the tendency to display prosocial behavior.
H2: The association in H1 holds when controlling for other variables known to influence crying proneness or moral judgments and behavior, such as disgust proneness, empathy, and age.
We designed six studies to investigate the relationship between crying proneness and judgments of moral transgressions and prosocial tendencies or behavior. In Studies 1, 2, and 5, the focus was on self-reported dispositional prosocial behavior, in Study 3 on self-reported frequency of prosocial behavior. Further, in Study 4 and 6, we measured actual prosocial behavior by either presenting participants with a tedious task that enabled them to earn money for charity or by having participants allocate money between themselves and another participant. As Studies 1–4 focused on the relationship between crying proneness and general moral judgments, we further explored this relationship in more depth by focusing on different moral domains (
All studies were approved by the Ethics Review Board of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg University. Studies 4 and 6 were registered before data collection, and we explicitly note deviations from the registered protocol. We report all measures and exclusions, and the data, syntax, registration, and material can be openly accessed via the
We collected data from 497 Dutch participants recruited as part of a research pool at Tilburg University and who received partial course credit for completion or via social media. After removing participants who failed to respond to at least 95% Note that we originally employed different exclusion rates across the studies (Study 1–3, 50%, Study 4, 70%). In order to increase the consistency of this process and to retain more high-quality data, we decided to apply a criterion of 95% across all studies. The main results including the original criteria are provided in the
The sample included 386 Dutch participants recruited via a research pool at Tilburg University or via social media. After applying the same exclusion criteria as in Study 1 (excluding participants below the age of 18,
Data were collected from 371 Indian participants via social media. When applying the same exclusion criteria as in the previous studies (below 95%
In total, we collected 697 UK-based participants via Prolific.co. We applied Prolific's representative screening, collecting participants representing the UK population according to gender, age, and ethnicity. Importantly, our sample is not representative of the whole UK population but represents the population according to these three variables. After excluding participants because they failed to respond to more than 95%
We collected 224 Dutch participants via social media (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn) Study 5 was originally conducted as part of a thesis (
We collected 603 UK-based participants via Prolific.co. As registered, participants were excluded if they failed an attention check (
Across all studies, we did not perform a specific a-priori power analysis but mainly focused on collecting as many participants as possible (
Procedures were similar across all studies. Questionnaires were created and hosted using Qualtrics. Participants provided informed consent and were given instructions about the specific study. In all studies, participants then completed the same or similar scales as provided in
Variable | Source | Scale | # Items | Example Item | α/ |
|||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Study 1 | Study 2 | Study 3 | Study 4 | Study 5 | Study 6 | |||||||||||||
Predictor | ||||||||||||||||||
Crying Proneness | Crying Proneness Scale | ( |
1 (Very unlikely) | 7 (Very likely) | 28 | “A wedding ceremony” | .96 | 2.36a (1.34) | .96 | 3.52 (1.23) | .92 | 4.05 (1.04) | .96 | 3.13 (1.19) | .97 | 2.43a (1.40) | .96 | 3.34 (1.18) |
Outcome | ||||||||||||||||||
Prosocial Behavior | Self-Report Altruism Scale | ( |
1 (Never/Not characteristic at all) | 5 (Very often/Very characteristic) | 20 | “Giving money to charity” | .78 | 3.49 (.42) | .81 | 3.59 (.44) | .89 | 3.20 (.64) | .82 | 3.51 (.44) | ||||
Letter Search Task | Total number of letters |
55.09 (53.95) | ||||||||||||||||
Social Value Orientation | ( |
6 | Allocating money between themselves and another participant | .50 (.23) | ||||||||||||||
Moral Judgments | Moral Transgressions | ( |
0 (Not at all) | 10 (Extremely) | 30 | “Someone jumps the queue at a popular attraction in a theme parc” | .92 | 6.56 (1.21) | .94 | 6.98 (1.29) | .97 | 6.88 (2.10) | .91 | 7.03 (1.01) | ||||
Integrity Scale | ( |
1 (Always Justified) | 4 (Never Justified) | 15 | "Buying something which you know is stolen." | .83 | 3.29 (.39) | |||||||||||
Moral Foundations Scale (Care/Fairness/Loyalty/ |
( |
1 (Not at all relevant/Strongly disagree) | 6 (Extremely relevant/ Strongly agree) | 30 | “I am proud of my country’s history.” | .62/ |
4.43 (.66) 4.43 (.60) |
.72/ |
4.65 (.78) |
|||||||||
Covariates | ||||||||||||||||||
Disgust Sensitivity | Disgust Scale-Revised Part II | ( |
0 (Not disgusting at all) | 4 (Extremely disgusting) | 13 | “You see maggots on a piece of meat in an outdoor garbage pail.” | .81 | 1.95 (.64) | .78 | 2.40 (.99) | .83 | 2.18 (.73) | .82 | 2.21 (.98) | .80 | 2.52 (.98) | ||
Emotional Expressivity | Berkeley Expressivity |
( |
1 (Strongly disagree) | 7 (Strongly agree) | 16 | “Whenever I feel positive emotions, people can easily see exactly what I am feeling.” | .77 | 3.32b (.51) | .88 | 4.68 (.96) | .80 | 4.62 (.82) | ||||||
Social Desirability | Marlowe-Crowne |
( |
1 (False) | 2 (True) | 15/13c | “No matter who I'm talking to, I'm always a good listener.” | .67 | 1.50 (.18) | .62 | 1.55 (.17) | .62 | 1.59 (.19) | .74 | 1.50 (.24) | ||||
Well-Being | WHO-5 well-being index | ( |
1 (At no time) | 6 (All of the time) | 5 | "Over the past 2 weeks, I have felt cheerful and in good spirits." | .82 | 5.30 (1.06) | .87 | 4.09 (1.08) | .91 | 3.51 (1.13) | ||||||
Empathy | Basic Empathy Scale |
( |
1 (Strongly disagree) | 5 (Strongly agree) | 20 | "I get caught up in other people's feelings easily." | .81 | 2.93d (.31) | .72 | 3.15 (.39) | .89 | 3.27 (.50) | ||||||
Fear of Sadness | Fear of Sadness Scale | ( |
1 (Not at all) | 5 (Very much) | 12 | "Entering places where you have been sad." | .85 | 2.41 (.70) | .89 | 2.49 (.80) | .85 | 2.01 (.65) | ||||||
Nostalgia | Southampton Nostalgia |
( |
1 (Not at all/Once or twice a year) | 7 (Very much/At least once a day) | 7 | "How valuable is nostalgia for you?" | .90 | 4.53 (1.32) | .94 | 4.62 (1.34) | ||||||||
Nostalgia Proneness | ( |
1 (I do this rarely/This is not important to me) | 7 (I do this very often/This is very important to me) | 5 | "I bring to mind rose-tinted memories." | .90 | 4.39 (1.20) | |||||||||||
Need to Belong | Need to belong scale | ( |
1 (Strongly Disagree) | 5 (Strongly Agree) | 10 | “I do not like being alone.” | .87 | 3.38 (.67) | ||||||||||
Trust | General Trust Scale | ( |
1 (Strongly Disagree) | 5 (Strongly Agree) | 6 | “Most people are trustworthy.” | .74 | 3.58 (.56) | ||||||||||
Social Dominance Orientation | SDO7(s) | ( |
1 (Strongly Disagree) | 5 (Strongly Agree) | 8 | “No one group should dominate in society.” | .87 | 2.44 (.48) |
aRated on a scale from 0 (Very Unlikely) to 7 (Very Likely) in Study 1 and 5. bRated on a scale from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly agree) in Study 1. cWe employed 15 items in Study 1 and 2 and 13 items in Study 3 and 4. dScale from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 4 (Strongly Agree) in Study 2.
After completing all self-report measures, participants were informed that they could earn additional money for a charity of their choice by participating in a visual search task in Study 4. The visual search task implied the identification of the lower case letter ‘n’ by clicking on it in twenty-five 25 * 40 matrices, containing a total of 22,500 letters, with 200 ‘n’s randomly distributed in it. Each correctly identified ‘n’ yielded .05€ for the participant. Thus, each participant could earn a maximum of 10€ when successfully identifying all ‘n’s. However, 90% of the money earned with this task was donated to one out of three possible charity organizations that they were able to choose from (
We employed the same measures for most constructs across all studies. An overview of the specific measures, their internal reliability, and means for each separate study is presented in
Across all studies, we employed the crying proneness scale (CPS;
We focused on two different operationalizations of
Second, we employed different measures to assess prosocial behavior. Prosocial behavior is often regarded as a type of moral behavior (
We also included several variables that we considered as possibly influencing the outcome variable. Disgust sensitivity and social desirability were assessed in all studies. Emotional expressivity was evaluated in Study 1–3, well-being, empathy, and fear of sadness in Study 2–4, nostalgia in Study 3–4, need to belong, trust, and social dominance orientation in Study 5. A more detailed overview is provided in
Across all studies, we recorded participants' gender, age, and nationality. We also assessed education in Studies 2 and 5 and relationship status in Studies 2–3 and 5. Finally, we probed for the participants' partial postcodes in Study 4 and 6. Postcode information can be obtained on request.
For all analyses, we set our alpha level at .05. All analyses were performed using
We further performed several exploratory analyses focusing on the relation of specific tear types, as identified by previous research, with moral judgments and behavior and connections among the predictor, outcomes, and covariates employing a network approach.
In Study 4, when inspecting the data, we realized that the visual search task did not accurately record the total number of letters identified for a part of the sample (
To test the association between crying proneness and moral judgments and behavior, we computed zero-order correlations between the crying proneness score and the two main outcome variables. Across all studies, we observed a positive correlation between crying proneness and moral judgments, As registered for Study 6, we also performed two regression models with crying proneness as the outcome and the five moral foundations as predictors. Across both studies, care/harm emerged as the most consistent predictor when controlling for the other foundations (see
Similarly, we observed a positive correlation between crying proneness and different prosocial behavior measures,
We also tested the relationship between crying proneness and moral judgments and behavior when controlling for other important variables known to affect the predictor and outcomes. We conducted a regression model for each study, including moral judgments or prosocial behavior as the outcome, crying proneness as the predictor, and specific subsets of the other variables as covariates. We also controlled for gender and age in Studies 1–3 and 5, but not in Study 4 as we did not include it in our registration (results controlling for gender and age can be found in the We also explored the partial correlations between crying proneness and prosocial tendencies/behavior when controlling for social desirability and empathy respectively, finding that crying proneness predicted prosocial tendencies/behavior beyond social desirability, but not consistently when controlling for empathy (
Predictor | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Study 1 | Study 2 | Study 3 | Study 4a | Study 5 | |
Prosocial Disposition/Frequency/Behavior | |||||
(Intercept) | 1.75** [1.28, 2.22] | 1.12** [.50, 1.74] | .04 [-.92, 1.01] | -1.40** [-2.28, -.62] | 3.22** [2.46, 3.97] |
Crying Proneness (CPS) | 0.04* [.00, .07] | 0.05* [.01, .09] | 0.05 [-.04, .13] | 0.08 [-.00, .16] | 0.04 [-.01, .09] |
Disgust Proneness (DPSS) | -0.08* [-.15, -.01] | -0.03 [-.07, .02] | -0.06 [-.17, .06] | -0.05 [-.14, .04] | -0.05 [-.12, .03] |
Emotional Expressivity (EES) | 0.20** [.12, .29] | 0.06 [-.00, .12] | 0.02 [-.10, .14] | ||
Social Desirability (MCSD) | 0.58** [.35, .80] | 0.46** [.20, .73] | 0.83** [.39, 1.28] | 0.38* [.03, .73] | |
Well-Being | -0.00 [-.04, .04] | 0.12** [.04, .20] | 0.05 [-.03, .12] | ||
Empathy | 0.42** [.24, .59] | 0.26* [.02, .51] | 0.19* [.01, .37] | ||
Fear of Sadness (FOS) | -0.00 [-.07, .07] | 0.05 [-.08, .17] | -0.03 [-.18, .12] | ||
Nostalgia Proneness (SNS) | 0.07 [-.00, .14] | 0.00 [-.06, .07] | |||
Need to Belong | 0.03 [-.08, .13] | ||||
Trust | 0.09 [-.03, .21] | ||||
Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) | -0.15* [-.29, -.01] | ||||
Gender | 0.11* [.01, .21] | -0.04 [-.16, .07] | -0.17 [-.35, .01] | .08 [-.08, .24] | |
Age | 0.00* [.00, .01] | 0.01** [.00, .01] | 0.01 [-.00, .02] | 0.00 [-.00, .01] | |
Model Fit (R2) | .23** [.14, .29] | .28** [.17, .33] | .27** [.13, .33] | .05** [.01, .07] | .14** [.02, .21] |
Moral Judgments | |||||
(Intercept) | 3.50** [2.13, 4.86] | 1.96* [.33, 3.58] | -2.88 [-5.92, .17] | 2.10** [1.82, 2.37] | 3.86** [2.31, 5.41] |
CPS | 0.13* [.03, .24] | 0.22** [.11, .33] | 0.03 [-.24, .29] | 0.04* [.01, .06] | 0.03 [-.07, .14] |
DPSS | 0.37** [.16, .57] | -0.03 [-.16, .10] | 0.36* [.01, .72] | 0.03 [-.00, .06]] | -0.03 [-.18, .12] |
EES | 0.05 [-.20, .29] | 0.04 [-.12, .19] | -0.12 [-.49, .25] | ||
MCSD | .43 [-.23, 1.09] | 0.79* [.10, 1.49] | 0.90 [-.49, 2.29] | 0.62** [.49 .74] | |
Well-Being | 0.08 [-.03, .19] | -0.05 [-.29, .20] | 0.01 [-.02, .04] | ||
Empathy | 0.06 [-.41, .53] | 1.96** [1.18, 2.73] | 0.03 [-.03, .09] | ||
FOS | 0.03 [-.16, .21] | -0.24 [-.64, .16] | 0.03 [-.02, .08] | ||
SNS | 0.19 [-.02, .41] | -0.02 [-.04, .00] | |||
Need to Belong | 0.07 [-.15, .29] | ||||
Trust | 0.07 [-.18, .32] | ||||
SDO | 0.14 [-.15, .43] | ||||
Gender | 0.28 [-.01, .57] | 0.37* [.07, .66] | 0.49 [-.06, 1.05] | 0.68** [.35, 1.01] | |
Age | 0.03** [.02, .04] | 0.04** [.03, .05] | 0.03* [.01, .06] | 0.03** [.02, .04] | |
Model Fit (R2) | .22** [.13,.28] | .43** [.33, .48] | .26** [.13, .32] | .20** [.14, .24] | .32** [.18, .40] |
aStudy 4 employed a different moral judgments measure (see
*
An overview of the relationship between crying proneness and the most commonly used covariates across the studies (emotional expressivity, disgust sensitivity, social desirability, empathy, fear of sadness, well-being) is provided in
We explored the relationship between moral judgments and prosocial behavior and crying proneness to different tear types (as defined by
We explored the data using network analyses in order to illustrate the relationships among the different variables. A detailed overview is provided in the Additional moderation models with age and gender are presented in the
Finally, we explored the difference between people donating any money in Study 4 by engaging in the visual search task and people not engaging in the task. We observed a higher crying proneness score for people participating in the visual search task (
We reported six studies to evaluate the hypothesis that people who tend to cry more easily also report higher moral judgments and behavior by showing stronger disapproval of moral transgressions and (a greater tendency to display) prosocial behavior, more specifically self-reported tendencies or frequencies, an actual effort to earn money for charity foundations, and allocation of money between another person and themselves. The studies were conducted in Dutch, Indian, and UK samples.
Supporting H1, we observed that crying proneness is positively related to moral judgments and prosocial behavior across different samples and measures. Overall, the link with prosocial behavior was weaker, likely because Studies 4 and 6 focused on outcomes of actual prosocial behavior. Both associations showed a high degree of heterogeneity across studies. Based on commonly observed effects in social psychology, the current effects can be interpreted as
The positive link between empathy and prosocial behavior has been shown consistently across studies (
On the one hand, it seems interesting to consider how crying proneness predicts prosocial tendencies or behavior beyond social desirability. It is possible that emotional tears can act as an
At the same time, crying proneness might not offer a strong level of explanatory value beyond empathy when it comes to prosocial behavior. Future studies would need to investigate this relationship more systematically, especially on a state level. It is also possible that crying proneness represents a specific aspect of the empathy construct (or a specific part of emotional expressivity). Nevertheless, based on our studies, crying proneness can be considered a more important predictor for moral judgments than empathy, suggesting that it might go beyond empathy (and other related constructs).
We further explored how emotional crying is related to different moral domains. Across Studies 5 and 6, we observed the strongest and most consistent association with the care/harm domain of the moral foundations (
Our findings provide some initial evidence that tear-prone individuals are not only evaluated as morally upright but that having a lower crying threshold might indeed be related to stronger moral evaluations and behavior. Importantly, our findings are correlational and thus do not allow for any causal claims. A general proneness to cry might influence moral behavior, but frequent moral behavior might also result in being more prone to cry, especially in situations revolving around moral issues. Alternatively, a third variable acting as a mediator, confounder, or collider might also explain the relationship. Future studies could experimentally manipulate emotional crying in individuals and assess moral evaluations and behavior afterward. It would be interesting to decipher further whether emotional crying is related to moral judgments and behavior primarily because it often occurs in response to moral emotions such as
Considering specific types of crying and tears, we did not observe any substantial differences across studies. These findings seem counterintuitive as one would expect the most robust associations for positive crying and moral or sentimental tears – aspects that highly focus on moral themes. This could signify that emotional crying per se is associated with moral judgments and behavior regardless of its valence or situation. Such an explanation would point to a more general relationship. Along these lines,
We observed that findings showed heterogeneity across studies, which could be related to different measurements, samples, or cultural differences. Most notably, findings for the Indian sample in Study 3 were weaker than in Study 1 and 2. This could be attributed to a different focus of the prosocial behavior measure (focusing on frequency rather than on general tendency) or to actual cultural differences. Cultural factors might impact certain moral judgments and therefore differ across different countries or regions (
Heterogeneity across the study might also be attributed to differences in data quality. Most notably, we excluded a more substantial number of participants in Studies 1–3 and 5 compared to Studies 4 and 6. This might not be surprising as Studies 1–3 and 5 did not offer financial compensation, while this was the case for Study 4 and 6, thereby providing incentives to complete the questionnaires. The high exclusion rate presents another limitation in Study 1–2 and 5, which did not randomize the order of the additional measures. However, we applied a conservative exclusion rate to retain participants who completed close to all items only. Nevertheless, the strength of the present studies lies in evaluating the association between crying proneness and moral judgments and behavior across different populations that extend beyond undergraduates and measures, including self-report ratings and assessments of actual behavior.
The current project provides some initial evidence that emotional crying is modestly associated with evaluations of moral uprightness and that people who cry more easily show stronger disapproval of moral transgressions and tend to be more willing to display prosocial behavior. Crying, or more specifically, emotional tears, might act as an
All studies were approved by the Ethics Review Board of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg University.
We thank Nancy Hoevenaar for her help in conducting Study 1–2.
For this article, data is freely available (
For this article, the following Supplementary Materials are available (for access see
Project depository including data, syntaxes, and materials
Supplementary Analyses, Figures & Tables
Preregistration Study 4
Preregistration Study 6
The authors have no funding to report.
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.