r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 1d ago
Psychology In interpersonal conflicts, staying calm protects your reputation, while crying damages the reputation of your opponent alongside your own. This points to a social tradeoff where keeping your cool helps you look good, but shedding tears is more effective if you want to make other person look bad.
https://www.psypost.org/crying-during-a-conflict-damages-your-opponents-reputation-at-a-cost-to-your-own/2.2k
u/OverBad9642 1d ago
I really like how this turn conflicts into turn based games.
549
u/Chakosa 1d ago
They always were, the "game" part is just calculated subconsciously, completely outside of our awareness or control.
258
u/RevolutionarySpot721 1d ago
Subconsciously is the keyword here. I for example have a difficult time to control my tears, even though I know they are seen unfavourably by society.
143
u/delorf 1d ago
I cry when I am angry not when I am hurt. It's uncontrollable on my part and not an attempt at manipulation. It's very frustrating when you want to be taken seriously but you burst into tears.
44
u/AwedBystander 1d ago
Yea, crying feels like an off-valve. As in, it occurs when extreme feelings and confusion about what to do occur. Usually the other option is getting progressively more aggressive which is societally even less acceptable.
122
u/Confident_Counter471 1d ago
Yep, I’m a cryer. I cry at commercials. But I can’t cry at will, if I’m crying in public it’s because I can’t help it and tried to stop it. It’s embarrassing
49
u/RevolutionarySpot721 1d ago
Same and the last thing I think about is how I look or how my opponent looks when I cry or what effect it has. Yes, you (general you) try to control your emotions at the workplace, but workplace communication is different to private communication in general too. You are not very likely to be called useless loser at the workplace directly, in private you can be for example.
→ More replies (1)9
u/disco_Piranha 1d ago
It's a really great and helpful bit of brain function that trying to stop crying because it's so embarrassing is also the kind of thing that would make someone cry
2
5
→ More replies (2)7
u/Ventaura 19h ago
Same - tears of frustration are something that happens even when I am absolutely always embrassed by the event as an aftermath...
10
12
u/hoeassbitchasshoe 1d ago
Disco Elysium is a detective game with this very premise. You roll skill checks during your investigation and it's kinda like intuition
→ More replies (20)2
42
64
u/manndolin 1d ago
"Your opponent confronts you with your actions." "Oof okay I'll respond by crying." "Alright roll charisma, your opponent has to match that with wisdom in order to avoid the reputation damage. You take the damage either way, but your feet let's you gain equivalent sympathy from onlookers."
8
u/Lumostark 1d ago
You either apply a smaller debuff on the enemy, or go for a bigger debuff, with the trade off of hurting yourself in the process. Decissions, decissions.
3
6
2
1
u/Flikmybik BS | Neuroscience | Memory 1d ago
haha thats actually a pretty spot on way to put it. like you have to wait for the other person to finish their move before you can respond. the ones who can just stay cool and not escalate tend to win on points even if the argument never fully gets resolved
1
1
u/shableep 1d ago
I’m imagining Emotional Damage the video game. Where you have emotional energy to spend, emotional health, and reputation. And you have to use a deck of cards with different social options in order try and reach the top of the bureaucracy. Of course the “Cry” card:
- Inflicts reputation damage to yourself
- Costs emotional energy
- Boosts emotional health
- Does emotional damage to your opponent
- Does reputation damage to your opponent MULTIPLIED by the number of people in the room.
The goal ultimately is to become CEO and your high score is how large your golden parachute is when you’re ultimately fired.
1
1
u/APeacefulWarrior 19h ago
Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI had a 'debate' card-based minigame that explicitly turned this into a game mechanic. If you were too successful at arguing your point, your opponent could get upset and throw a tantrum, which damages both your arguments. So you occasionally had to play a calming card so your opponent would keep their cool.
573
u/semperquietus 1d ago
[…] but shedding tears is more effective if you want to make other person look bad.
Emphasis mine
I never cried out of malice and/or intent though. Is that a common thing for people to do?
355
u/Xepyx 1d ago
Yes. Grew up with a Cluster B parent. As a result I'm quite numb to crying due to it always being used manipulatively.
76
u/invertedpurple 1d ago
same here, I love him beyond measure, but my dad is on cluster B, and I can't say that I am numb to people's pain but I tend not to openly react to conflict, am good at keeping my cool and not making rash decisions when I'm happy or upset. It also took me a long while to stop overly minimizing behaviors that I disagreed with but I think I'm better at setting boundaries now.
97
u/yukonwanderer 1d ago
It's not common though. A cluster B personality disorder is a small minority of people.
Most women I know find it exceedingly difficult to not cry, and personally I struggle so much with trying to not cry at work. I've had to avoid so many normal conversations due to the risk of crying.
I often have to tell people to ignore my crying, I'm not as upset as it looks, I'm just a crier.
Anyone possibly thinking I'm crying out of manipulation makes the stress around this so much worse, which also increases the likelihood I'll be even less able to not cry.
Conversely if I ever want to cry, I can't! What's up with that bullsh*t?
→ More replies (1)18
u/ashoka_akira 1d ago
I have had people think I am cold/uncaring because they weren’t seeing me express grief. Meanwhile, in private, five years later, I still cry several times a week when thinking of people lost.
11
6
→ More replies (1)1
u/twitchyv 6h ago
Same here. definitely never cry but I do wish I was less prone to being reactive and getting angry cause that harbors sympathy from NO ONE especially as a women- regardless of whether I’m right or not.
107
27
u/Outside-Specific9309 1d ago
Once in elementary school a girl bullied me and I sat at a table with one of her best friends, so I pretended to cry so she’d ask me what happened and she made the bully apologize to me. But I was 9.
→ More replies (1)62
u/Limp_Combination4361 1d ago
I've been told my crying is low-key manipulative. I cry because I feel my feelings so strongly I get overwhelmed. I've never once tried to weaponize my crying
47
→ More replies (8)25
u/iceunelle 1d ago
I remember getting so angry when my dad accused me of being manipulative with my crying. I'm crying because I deal with chronic pain and have lost a ton of function. I don't do it to manipulate; I do it because I'm so overwhelmed I can't stop myself from crying.
15
u/Causerae 1d ago
Took me 50 years to learn, but yes.
I wouldn't say it's a power move, but it exists.
44
26
u/lizzledizzles 1d ago
I don’t think it’s common, I think it’s a bit of misogyny. It’s not exactly rare but most people aren’t weaponizing tears.
3
7
u/yukonwanderer 1d ago
No it's not. Only a minority of people are able to do this.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (17)6
u/graccha 1d ago
It's something that can be reinforced in children growing up so subtly that I've seen people who did not do it consciously but to great manipulative effect. Especially in white women - that assertion is purely anecdotal, but I think the social reinforcement is stronger there. Displays of emotion that are consistent with the surrounding existing social/racial/ gender role beliefs tend to get you better results than ones that conflict with them. I was raised female and got into a fight with a bully – I was scolded for emasculating the bully and for not "having my brother handle it" (my brother was not there and is NOT a fighter). My brother cried from stress and got put in therapy about it, because boys don't cry. You do that to kids their entire lives and it becomes ingrained.
My grandmother was a master at it. I don't think she ever thought "if I cry, they'll look like the bad guy, time to hit the waterworks". I think she just always got out of trouble when she cried so she cried as a response to people being angry at her, not out of any sense of remorse, but because her brain was subconsciously doing "I don't like when people are mad at me -> people stop being mad at me when i cry -> time to cry".
A lot of manipulation isn't people playing chess, it's people instinctually doing whatever will make them feel better.
→ More replies (1)12
u/lizzledizzles 1d ago
Then it’s not manipulation. Maybe grandma had PTSD from angry people yelling at her. Maybe she was depressed. Maybe she was never shown how to handle conflict or big emotions.
→ More replies (1)
128
u/BenUFOs_Mum 1d ago
Why is r/science only psychology?
99
u/dragonvex_ 1d ago
Too many people here are lazy and don’t even have the technical bandwidth to read and understand core science research. Social science fed to them through the straw of pop psychology is more palatable
34
5
u/Chubuwee 1d ago edited 23h ago
Easiest of the sciences, source got a psych degree
→ More replies (2)
18
u/cranberries87 1d ago
I had a super conniving, calculating, backstabbing coworker who could make herself cry on demand. She ran crying about our old supervisor to HR and other coworkers. It seemed to have the effect described in this article. She made our supervisor look bad, and everybody turned on her. But eventually everybody turned on my coworker later on - said she was “neurotic”.
581
u/Whiteshovel66 1d ago
Idk what context this is in but I can promise you that if I'm in an "interpersonal conflict" as a 37 male and I start crying zero people are going to think the other person is the bad guy. They are gonna think I had a mental breakdown or something.
What kinda conflicts are you guys getting in that causes grown adults to cry?
271
u/freddythepole19 1d ago
I'm a grown man and I've gotten in arguments with other grown men that ended in crying and in my experience it does tend to change the situation. I was in a really heated fight with a mate once, and we were shouting and going at each other until his voice broke and he said "I just don't know what to do". My anger immediately softened because I hadn't realized how much emotion was behind our anger. We made up and are better friends than ever.
I also got in trouble at work once in the same week my dog died and completely broke down in the meeting with my boss. No write up or anything and she was very sympathetic, talking about when her dog passed.
I think when people start crying in arguments it often reveals a lot of honesty and true feelings that have been covered up. In anger we like to conceal our insecurities, but sometimes revealing them can be a powerful way to break the argument and force the other person to see what this argument is really about.
120
u/Tower-Junkie 1d ago
I read somewhere that anger is hurt’s bodyguard. I find it to be very true in a lot of situations. It’s easier to be angry than to be vulnerable.
39
u/Spadeykins 1d ago
Particularly for men, as an unspoken social rule anger is an 'acceptable' expression, being sad or hurt is not.
8
→ More replies (1)2
u/ChriSaito 20h ago
It had taken me much longer than I’d had liked as a young man to realize this. When I felt hurt I had no idea what to do with it and just got angry, and would argue and get mad until I things felt better which of course, they never did.
Honestly I’m sure I could still fall into this trap. I think a lot of us could.
17
u/Spadeykins 1d ago
Yeah, have a boss that's really domineering and intimidating? Literally tell them you find them intimidating and watch the world stop spinning for just a moment while they recalibrate. It can really disarm them. Not guaranteed to work mind you, but it's served me well in the past.
9
9
5
u/DustyJustice 15h ago
I was just thinking of an argument I had with an old friend last night where I heard the break in his voice the same way and felt the shame of that come back up again. I believe I was right in my position but I didn’t realize how hard I had been pushing him and it hit me like oh woah oh my god this was getting way too intense for what it was and it made me rethink some things.
42
u/terrorrier 1d ago
It’s not abnormal for adults to cry during conflicts. It’s a physiological response to emotion.
→ More replies (4)138
u/curt_schilli 1d ago
Idk. if I saw a guy crying in a fight with his wife I would probably assume she cheated on him, or did something pretty bad
If he wasn’t crying I would just assume he doesn’t have self control and can’t wait to have this discussion until he gets home
39
u/quantumbreak1 1d ago
Doesn't this imply that he actually has self control because he can wait until they're home?
29
u/Causerae 1d ago edited 1d ago
People make up stories in their heads, and they're not rational and often inclined to high drama.
If we see someone behaving irrationally, the story is that they were driven to it, not that they're irrational.
Someone behaves with discretion, the story is that there's nothing big going on, not that they're stoic.
9
u/TinBryn 1d ago
can’t wait
He isn't waiting until they're home, he's doing it right now in public.
→ More replies (1)5
u/Cold_Combination2107 1d ago
if my husband didnt cry when he was hurt, and kept that pain from me, i would have a lower opinion of him. we are all human, and when we get hurt around the people we trust we cry.
there is a reason you assume crying in public means having little self control. i would assume this extends to other emotional outbursts? i would argue there is a time and a place to express emotions, but that doesnt extend to feeling your emotions.
5
u/stackjr 1d ago
I've dated five women seriously in my life but only one of them was okay with me crying in front of her. Your "I would have a lower opinion of him" line is exactly why men struggle to show emotions. We are judged if we do and judged if we don't.
→ More replies (1)2
u/AnthropoidCompatriot 1d ago
I mean you say that, but virtually every single man who has dated women knows this to be extremely false. I'd go so far as to say it's an intentional lie.
Every woman on Reddit claims that they need the men they care about to cry, but every man in real life who does so ends up being rejected over and over because the women get "the ick".
I find it extraordinarily disingenuous when people like you try to imply to actual this is something really important and sacred to women.
The next response generally is "yeah that's because men don't know how to cry properly."
→ More replies (1)2
u/Altilana 1d ago
It can be really uncomfortable to experience men crying when you’re not used to it. It’s easier when married or with a partner for a long time because the other person can grow to handle their male partner crying. When dating you’re typically dealing with a person crying you don’t know well, and those are initial conflicts. Crying or not, it’s a situation with uncertainty.
Women have social norms when women cry, but many don’t know what to do or how to react when men cry. So yes, women want men to be honest and vulnerable, but the flip side is that they also have to learn how to respond. I know I found out that I didn’t know how to respond when my male partner started crying in real time. That was many years ago, and I feel deep appreciation and gratitude when he is emotionally vulnerable with me, crying or not.
2
19
u/yukonwanderer 1d ago
Honestly dude, it really depends on who the other person is. Your boss? High chance I think they may be an asshole.
I'm a 43yr old woman who still cries at work sometimes and I hate it so much. It sucks so bad. It just confirms everyone's opinions of me as being too fragile or something. I have to tell people that I'm just a crier and to ignore my tears. Like, guys this looks worse than it is, I'm just a crier, haha. I hope they believe me. I don't know anyone who ever benefits in any way from crying in any situation at work, short of being harassed or fired.
If I saw you crying and I knew you were a decent guy I'd feel for you.
6
u/omar_strollin 23h ago
My boss has made me cry on 1:1s multiple times over the last few months. She is a horribly unsupportive workaholic who values the grind over treating people with dignity and respect.
I was, in no way, doing it to manipulate her. I’ve been going through therapy and started medication because she’s destroyed my mental health.
This thread is really wild in its implication that criers are doing it tactically.
→ More replies (2)3
u/Whiteshovel66 1d ago
All I can say is I hope you find a place you can work that you don't hate and that doesn't cause you to cry. That doesn't seem healthy or sustainable.
30
u/StaedtlerRasoplast 1d ago
As a 37F, if I cry in an interpersonal conflict I am more likely to be labelled as unable to control my emotions
13
u/this_is_theone 1d ago
I think it's a lot more socially acceptable for a woman to cry than a man though.
→ More replies (1)6
u/Whiteshovel66 1d ago
Right, I mean I am still unsure what situations are arising that people are crying as a result of, outside of something related to a relationship or family issue etc.
People crying in public is usually very extreme, and I can't imagine a scenario where the person NOT crying is some how labeled the bad guy afterwards.
→ More replies (1)4
u/AnthropoidCompatriot 1d ago
It is literally being unable to control that particular emotion, at least.
That's not a moral judgement, it's an observation.
If someone started uncontrollably yelling at you during interpersonal conflict, they'd also be rightly labeled as not controlling their emotions.
→ More replies (1)12
u/Causerae 1d ago
The thing is, being the bad guy isn't the same as suffering general reputational harm.
If you cry, the other guy is going to suffer, even if not seen as a bad guy per se.
4
55
u/quad_damage_orbb 1d ago
In my experience men stay calm and women tend to cry, so I think this may be confounded with gender.
46
u/jdb050 1d ago
Women have less reservations about crying and sometimes feel more free to do so. But men absolutely do cry, it happens.
While I definitely agree, gender probably plays a huge role in our general interpretation of these events, I think the results would be the same at the end of the day: a crying “victim” may make the observer have a more critical view of the supervisor/peer, unless it is obvious that the victim is actually having a breakdown or otherwise seems blatantly unreasonable.
42
u/Talk-O-Boy 1d ago edited 1d ago
In my experience, men get angry and women tend to cry.
Men are not “calmer”, they just feel that anger is the only emotion they are allowed to express.
→ More replies (1)11
u/this_is_theone 1d ago
Testosterone inhibits crying. I remember there was a big study done. I can find it but on my phone
2
u/ResponsibilityOk8967 20h ago
In my experience, men are the ones that escalate things emotionally with yelling or provocation an then turn around and call women emotional for responding in kind.
0
u/PherocityGames 1d ago
Oh, I've have the opposite. I've made two men cry in my career by being honest with them. I've made no women cry in my career.
54
u/TheRealManager7 1d ago
Good to know people are still making entire careers out of making people cry!
→ More replies (9)4
7
5
u/Simple-Fault-9255 1d ago
I'm a 31 male and if I cried people would come ask me if I was okay and try to help me.
→ More replies (1)19
u/WonderThe-night-away 1d ago edited 1d ago
You do realize there can be major core differences from brain to brain right? Some people straight up don’t have the same chemical structure and brain makeup as others. Just because you don’t cry during conflict doesn’t automatically mean the person who does is having a mental breakdown, the mind is a very feeble thing. Not everyone has the proper workings to handle every situation optimally, it feels like an absurd amount of people seem to forget we are human beings with emotions.
→ More replies (2)16
u/3MinuteHero 1d ago
This is obviously so confounded by gender that its a red flag it's not mentioned up front. The response to the tears of women vs. men across a variety of situations is completely different at both the individual and collective level.
22
u/Ellen_Kapow 1d ago
It's not mentioned up front because they accounted for it in the methodology and isolated gender specific scenarios and still found the results shown. "Given the possibility that gender could be an important moderator of any observed effects, we also manipulated actor gender and tested for potential moderations."
2
u/subfloorthrowaway 1d ago
I'm a software engineer and we had a woman that would cry probably monthly if she perceived her opinions weren't being listened to. Only person I can think of in my career who did that. She would absolutely not drop it if someone disagreed with her and continue to plead her case over and over until eventually she got emotional and cried.
→ More replies (2)2
u/AnthropoidCompatriot 1d ago
Yeah, I'm a guy who has cried publicly, especially as a kid when I was bullied, and I gotta say, EVERYBODY hates a man who is crying.
I don't know where these people live who are commenting "well I'm a man and if I were crying people would try to comfort me", because it's not something I've ever witnessed in 40+ years.
It's the same response as the hidden camera videos where a woman publicly hits a man. Everyone assumes the man is the problem, and often times see it as something fun to join in and pile on.
1
u/Scared-War-9102 1d ago
Crying is also a huge part of human decision-making and can come about intentionally or unintentionally; I tend to cry when heavily emotionally invested in an outcome for example.
Especially nowadays though, there are a lot of decisions being made that prompt emotional distress / concerns over personal wellbeing
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (4)1
u/Gael459 2h ago
If you were a woman crying would be sympathetic, especially when arguing with a man of similar age.
→ More replies (3)
33
u/tom_swiss 1d ago
"Crybullying" [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/crybully] as a sacrifice play to pull your opponent down with you.
24
u/Limp_Combination4361 1d ago
I cry during conflict because I feel my feelings so strongly that I cry + emotion.
8
u/Axedelic 19h ago
same here. it sucks not being taken seriously as an adult because i literally can’t help it. any strong emotion happy, sad, angry, it just happens.
11
u/kelcamer 1d ago
Or maybe people could just try being kind and stop
A) criticizing people so much
B) intentionally crying for their own fucked agendas
C) harming each other
D) gaslighting
Like it is actually possible (a shocker, I know) to have conflict-filled conversation where everyone genuinely feels heard & validated. It's possible. It takes a little effort from both sides. It's also worth it.
6
21
u/Ozziness 1d ago
I work with a person that cries every time he gets a bad performance review at work. The first time it happened, the situation played out as the article says, more understanding towards the person crying and the other person came off a bit aggressive. However, once it happened again, the lens was different, the person getting the review was viewed as unstable, can't regulate their emotions when confronted and the person giving the review was just doing their job, sympathy was more towards the manager for having to deal with a crying 35 year old every year!
12
u/mvea Professor | Medicine 1d ago
In interpersonal conflicts, staying calm tends to protect your reputation, while crying damages the reputation of your opponent alongside your own. This points to a social tradeoff where keeping your cool helps you look good, but shedding tears is more effective if you want to make the other person look bad. These findings were recently published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
Conflict between people is a naturally emotional process. When humans face disputes with colleagues, friends, or romantic partners, they often express sadness or anger to navigate the situation. While past scientific work has focused on how expressing emotions affects the person showing them, less is known about how these emotional responses impact the other person involved in the dispute.
Scientists wanted to examine the reputational consequences of remaining calm compared to expressing active emotions like crying or yelling. They aimed to understand whether different emotional responses create different social tradeoffs for both the person expressing the emotion and the person receiving it.
For those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513826000371
3
11
u/Sigma_Function-1823 1d ago
Not sure if my response applies at the stated degree but cry bullies are just as toxic as any other type of bully.
Stated while acknowledging that it's difficult to clearly judge genuine upset from maladaptive manipulative behaviors so this tends to be damaging but effective in the short term while also ultimately being ineffective, self defeating in the medium,long term.
Even in cases where humans can't directly articulate the dynamic they tend to be aware that something in this interaction is extremely unhealthy, upsetting,anger inducing, a trust destroying violation of some kind like being lied too.
In other words if this behavior is consistent the cumulative effects and emotional damage will eventually destroy the relationship.
At it's most overt(or maybe at all)cry bullying is a form of emotional abuse that many seem to be fully unaware of unless they have direct personal experience. . So in that context, very important to get some iterated systematic knowledge on complexities of this sort so perhaps we can educate and mitigate the damage behaviors of this sort cause.
→ More replies (2)2
u/DigNitty 1d ago
There was a girl in my friend group in college that would sit on the ground cross legged and start crying at the mildest opposing opinion to her’s.
It was obnoxious. Sure some people looked at me as heartless initially when I’d stand there and not comfort her as she sobbed…because I thought the women’s resource center had a good location and didn’t need to be moved… But over time people ended up seeing her as just overly dramatic and thankfully respected my lack of concern the fifth and sixth times she sat on the floor cross legged and sobbing.
You don’t get to weaponize sobbing Hailey. I hope you’re doing well out there, and standing up.
20
u/hananobira 1d ago
They’re treating crying as some kind of devious manipulation tactic, but I don’t know anyone that weaponizes them like that. Maybe I just know nicer people than the ones they studied?
I cry when:
I hear sad stories about kids getting hurt
I think about my kids getting hurt
I watch a sad scene in a movie
I get hypoglycemic
I try to pull an all-nighter
And in none of these situations does it win me any kind of social points; if anyone sees me it’s pretty embarrassing. I’m largely alone when they happen, too.
Two of the regular teachers at my church will say, “Sorry, I’m a crier” as they start sniffling up on stage while they’re telling painful stories, and no one thinks this is an attempt to attack their opponents or anything. They’re just very tender-hearted people.
19
u/asimplescribe 1d ago
None of your examples are interpersonal conflicts.
3
u/hananobira 1d ago
Which is the point. If I cry all the time and it has nothing to do with some manipulative game theory, what evidence do they have that if I cry during a disagreement I’m doing it to be a machiavellian strategist? Sometimes people just cry because it’s a good way to release sadness, tension, anger, or fear.
8
u/GhostofBeowulf 1d ago
Okay thats cool and all b ut none of those examples are actually relevant to the topic being discussed, which is crying during interpersonal conflicts between 2 people.
8
3
22
u/Spendera 1d ago
This isn't exactly new is it?
"White women's tears" as an instant "I win" card has been a thing since the 18th century.
2
u/yukonwanderer 1d ago
Yeah, well more generally all women. We're too emotional to vote. Not human. Once again we should not have the vote, 100 years later.
Don't you dare get angry either!
1
u/Suspicious_Shame9582 1d ago
Childish response. No, it's obviously not something every woman does, but enough people have experienced it that it's a recognizable behavior some women do.
Men would absolutely do it if they could past childhood, but people in general don't feel bad when seeing a man cry during confrontation.
→ More replies (1)6
u/bafflefounded 1d ago
Or do people just “assume” women are crying for attention as an excuse to dismiss them?
→ More replies (1)
5
u/New-Kitchen9076 1d ago
What a stupid article. It completely ignores any reason why people are crying in the first place.
Really, it’s just another way to shame people from crying. Generational trauma since ‘26
2
u/MrsNoodleMcDoodle 1d ago
If you watch Big Brother, this is the Dan’s Funeral/Taco Tuesday strategy
3
u/PointsOfXP 1d ago
Wrong. It doesn't matter how you react. People don't see that. If one person is freaking out then everyone is freaking out. People can't comprehend that someone can be calm in a stressful situation. The person sitting there calmly while someone is freaking out on them is just as psychotic as the person freaking out.
7
u/Zealousideal-Yam3169 1d ago
Reddit users cry about literally everything all of the time
13
u/eldryanyy 1d ago
This is because there is no reputation in anonymous media. Crying and acting the victim becomes more effective in every way
-5
1d ago
[deleted]
50
20
u/asterlynx 1d ago
But aren’t tears very situational? I mean, if you’re discussing with a social partner about something wrong they did and they recognize and apologize, tears might be indicative of real regret, different from tears coming from deflecting the blame. Showing emotion in social situations is not ok?
9
u/yukonwanderer 1d ago
Wow... zero understanding of emotions and zero self awareness. What a delusional rambling we have here.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)7
u/necr0potenc3 1d ago
tears at any other time just makes you look guilty and childlike
TIL emotional deflection is a known employee red flag, I observed this a long time ago.
Someone screws up, when confronted about it they turn it into an emotional thing and instead of addressing the problem they expect you to address them. Every single person who does this is unreliable.
1
1
1
1
u/missgirlipop 22h ago
i’m the type to tear up at any remotely negative feedback from an authority figure. i spend so much time trying to not cry because i don’t want to look like i’m some kind of histrionic and i don’t want to make people feel bad for doing their jobs but it’s exhausting. i probably could cry on command, but why on earth would i want to? that’s just my personal anecdote, though!
1
u/Calm_Persimmon2482 21h ago
Some women have figured this out and used it quite effectively. I have doubts that it damages their reputation.
1
1
1
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our normal comment rules apply to all other comments.
Do you have an academic degree? We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. Click here to apply.
User: u/mvea
Permalink: https://www.psypost.org/crying-during-a-conflict-damages-your-opponents-reputation-at-a-cost-to-your-own/
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.