Suppose you need to seek help from a specialist, whether it be a lawyer, an engineer, or a doctor. Who is more likely to inspire confidence in you: a person who will cry if something bad happens, or someone who will experience such a moment with a stone face? Will a crying doctor be perceived by you as less competent?
Emotional crying is a unique human behavior that kind of brings people together. In addition, tears help reduce stress and relieve psychological stress. But in addition to the positive effects, there is a downside — tears are often considered a sign of weakness and incontinence.
Polish scientists wondered if crying affects how others perceive our competence in a particular issue. To find out whether crying affects judgments of professionalism, subjects were shown images of both crying and calm people.
Each photo was accompanied by short text describing the context, which could be positive, negative or neutral. For example: «The picture was taken at the moment when the girl was reunited with her beloved, whom she had not seen for many years.»
As a result of the work, it turned out that tears have little effect on the perception of competence.
The situational context plays an important role. So, crying people are perceived as incompetent only in certain conditions. For example, when a person cried in an emotionally neutral situation (during laundry or going to the store) and the observers could not tell what the reason for his tears was, they considered his reaction inappropriate and, as a result, the crying person — incompetent.
Interestingly, the presence of tears was associated with both helplessness and honesty. If a person cried in a situation where tears were inappropriate or unnecessary, he was considered helpless, and competence in the eyes of other people decreased. Conversely, if a person cried in a suitable situation, his competence increased.
According to the scientists, the results show that, like other emotional expressions, crying cannot be studied outside the context of a situation. Therefore, in order to determine the roots of popular negative ideas about tears, it is necessary to focus on how the context changes their overall perception.
Wróbel, M., Wągrowska, J., Zickfeld, J. H., & van de Ven, N. «Tears do not influence competence in general, but only under specific circumstances: A systematic investigation across 41 countries». Emotion, 22(2), 292-304.