Very interesting: [url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/06/AR201101... the world of romance, something to cry about
[INDENT]"The smell of a woman's tears, the study found, is associated with a dip in testosterone, the principal male hormone, and a general decline in sexual arousal."[/INDENT]

Mind you; these are emotional tears, not dry-eyes-too-much-air-conditioning-tears. And the scent is not consciously detectable; we're talking about pheromones. Those small chemical factors that trigger social responses. Most commonly known would be falling in love, but any social response possible.

This experiment was done on a small group: 24 males, of which 17 found the faces to be less sexually attractive after sniffing tears than after sniffing saline in the experiment. I for one am hoping for more research to come to verify these results (or criticize them)! Not to mention what secrets the tears of men and children may hide! Funny detail: the research was conducted with woman's tears first for "practical reasons" ;)

From my knowledge; it was believed earlier that faces streamed with tears would cause testosterone to drop, for the purpose of creating less aggressive attitude and therefor more prone to provide comfort. Maybe less sexual orientation would enhance the comforting and caring, maybe it's just a side-effect of the necessary dip in testosterone?

I had never read about actual pheromones causing it, more like a result of empathy and how humans learn to interpret emotions by facial expression a.o. In this experiment we are not talking crying faces, just smelling tears. Would be interesting to see if the dip in testosterone is more severe when facial expression is accompanied by the smell of emotional tears (compared to the same faces and sniffing saline).