Debra Lieberman

Interpersonal contact is essential for cooperation and care, but it also provides a route for pathogen transmission between individuals. Hence, a key challenge for social organisms involves maintaining beneficial social contact while also limiting exposure to infection risks. Existing proposals suggest that this trade-off is guided by the interpersonal value of specific social targets. In addition, ecological and cultural factors including historical pathogen prevalence, individualism-collectivism, tightness-looseness, and relational mobility might also shape how people avoid pathogens. To test whether and how infection-risky social contact varies with individual-level interpersonal value and these societal-level factors, we collected data from 61 societies (n = 42,756). Participants were randomly assigned to imagine targets who varied in interpersonal value, then rated their comfort with infection-risky contact with that target (e.g., drinking from the same water bottle) and whether they would touch the target when greeting them. In all societies, participants were more comfortable with infection-risky contact and more likely to engage in physical contact during greetings with targets of higher interpersonal value. Such associations varied only modestly across societies. Notably, the associations between infection-risky contact and societal-level factors depended on target interpersonal value and were concentrated among high-value targets – contact was lower where historical pathogen prevalence and tightness were greater, and higher where individualism and relational mobility were greater. These findings suggest that infection-risky contact is primarily guided by the value of social targets, with ecological and cultural factors playing a lesser role.

Interpersonal contact is essential for cooperation and care, but it also provides a route for pathogen transmission between individuals. Hence, a key challenge for social organisms involves maintaining beneficial social contact while also limiting exposure to infection risks. Existing proposals suggest that this trade-off is guided by the interpersonal value of specific social targets. In addition, ecological and cultural factors, including historical pathogen prevalence, individualism-collectivism, tightness–looseness, and relational mobility, might also shape how people avoid pathogens. To test whether and how infection-risky social contact varies with individual-level interpersonal value and these societal-level factors, we collected data from 47,756 participants across 61 societies. Participants were randomly assigned to picture a social target - either a friend, acquaintance, stranger, or enemy. They then rated their comfort with infection-risky contact with that target (e.g., drinking from the same water bottle) and whether they would touch the target when greeting them. In all societies, participants were more comfortable with infection-risky contact and more likely to engage in physical contact during greetings with targets of higher interpersonal value. Such associations varied only modestly across societies. Notably, the associations between infection-risky contact and societal-level factors depended on target interpersonal value and were concentrated among high-value targets—contact was lower where historical pathogen prevalence and tightness were greater and higher where individualism and relational mobility were greater. These findings suggest that infection-risky contact is primarily guided by the value of social targets, with ecological and cultural factors playing a lesser role.

Organisms, including humans, would have disproportionately descended from ancestors who, over generations, captured fitness benefits and are therefore expected to be well-designed to procure those benefits. When individuals cannot directly obtain benefits, they may still secure them by seeking assistance from others. Emotional tears may serve as signals through which people influence others to act on their behalf in ways that benefit them, in situations in which their bargaining power is relatively low. Here, we test the hypothesis that, in a conflict between two individuals, people expect the individual with lower bargaining power to be more likely to tear up. We conducted an online experiment with participants from the United States (N = 410) and India (N = 276). Participants read vignettes depicting conflicts between an individual with relatively low fighting ability (a wife, a daughter, or a physically weak man) and another individual with higher fighting ability (a husband, a mother, or a physically strong man), accompanied by images of their faces. Consistent with the hypothesis, participants expected target individuals to tear up more when they perceived them as less physically formidable. However, participants did not consistently expect tears from the weaker individual in a dyad. Overall, the findings suggest that perceived fighting ability may represent an important cue in judgments about the likelihood of tearing up in others. Tears may serve as a bargaining tactic when one’s bargaining potential is low.

Fitouchi et al. persuasively argue against popular disgust-based accounts of puritanical morality. However, they do not consider alternative account of moral condemnation that is also based on the psychology of disgust. We argue that these other disgust-based accounts are more promising than those dismissed in the target article.

Although much is known about emotional tears from the perspectives of neurobiology and behavior, the production of emotional tears and the responses they elicit depend sensitively on a rich set of computations—one which has received little attention to date. This review article aims to close this gap. Emotional tearing occurs during negative events (e.g., injuries) and positive events (e.g., achievements). Episodes of tearing appear to be united by tearers’ subjective imputation of negative or positive value to certain internal or external phenomena. Knowing the degree to which objects, organisms, events, and states of affairs enhance or diminish one’s prospects—the value of things—is a pressing matter for humans and other organisms. Value information is produced for internal consumption, to be used by behavior-regulating mechanisms in the focal individual. But some evaluations are made available, in addition, to other people, through tearing and other forms of verbal and nonverbal communication. Tearing may function as an implicit plea for receivers (the tear targets) to minimize the costs imposed on the tearer by nature, by third-parties, or by the tear targets themselves—common when the tearer has lower formidability or wherewithal than tear targets do. In addition, tearing may exhort tear targets to infer and register which things the tearer values, positively or negatively. Here, we characterize tears, describe the game-theoretic logic of bargaining from a position of weakness, outline the computational systems that regulate the production of and responses to emotional tears, and review findings about emotional tearing that are relevant to the signaling hypothesis.

Fitouchi and colleagues persuasively argue against popular disgust-based accounts of puritanical morality. However, they do not consider alternative disgust-based accounts of moral condemnation. We argue that these other accounts are more promising than those dismissed in the target article.