Is Crying a Turn Off?

kim k     We have all seen movies or been in a situation where a girl starts to cry and a guy awkwardly tries to console her, but is there more to the story than the guy just not knowing how to handle the situation? According to many studies, guys a sexually turned off when girls cry. In the double blind experiment, males either smelled women’s fresh tears or saline. The scientists found that neither liquid had a discernible odor to men. After smelling the liquid, the men were then shown images of woman not involved in the study.

What was found was that men who had smelled the real tears of women were less sexually aroused than men who only smelled the saline. The scientists based how aroused the men were by their body temperature, heart levels, testosterone levels, ect. The men who smelled the real woman tears also said that they felt less aroused then the men who smelled saline. It was also found that men who smelled the real tears had less brain activity in the section of the brain linked to sexual arousal.

What really surprised me about this study was that it was the smell of tears that caused the men to be turned off sexually. I never would have thought that the smell of tears is what cause men to go in to such a panic. I thought men didn’t like girls crying because they didn’t know what to do to make her feel better, not being they were sexually turned off because of the smell. I also thought maybe they didn’t like girls crying because it made them look unattractive. These could also be other facts that could be further explored in future studies. Overall, I think the study was conducted very well but I think the details of the studies could have been given with more details (ex: how many guys were tested, what age group, etc.).

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/01/110106-womens-tears-sex-drive-turn-off-sexual-health-arousal-men-science/

Would it be different if a woman smelt a guys tears?

2 thoughts on “Is Crying a Turn Off?

  1. Natalie Michelle Soltero Cabrera

    I was shocked with how the smell of tears is a turn off for men.I actually didn’t even know they could smell tears. I thought it was because they thought we were too needy by crying or something, it never occurred to me that it could be the actual smell of tears. Sorry, that I’ve mentioned this so much, but I’m still a little bit shocked. Also, I found another post that talks about this and I found it really interesting. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/06/chemical-signal-in-womens_n_805368.html

  2. Alyssa Marie Gregory

    I loved this blog. I would like to go deeper into the idea that men are turned off by the scent of tears. I believe that humans were made to reproduce therefore we innately are turned on and off by certain things of the opposite sex. Just like animals , humans are attracted by their senses . Surprisingly we let our sense of smell over vision unknowingly take over sometimes. It was to no surprise to me that certain scents turned a man on or off. It is all in how we are programmed. Certain scents are more appealing to men. Also going off the study you mentioned on men I was a bit curios on how many men were actually in the experiment to give the findings some more validity. Andrew always tells us that studies must be relatively large to make sure we are finding the truth in the situation. Also when it comes to the study what were the age of the men , for their arousal might decline as their age does. These are all questions that come to mind when reading your blog. But overall this was very interesting and well put together. Here is a link showing scents that excite a man http://archive.lovingyou.com/content/passion/lovemaking-content.php?ART=scentsofseduction

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