A comparative approach to emotional crying in humans (Homo sapiens)-Tears as paedomorphic signals

Emotional crying refers to the uniquely human characteristic of producing visible tears in response to emotionally salient experiences. Originating in infancy as a biologically prepared distress signal, emotional crying persists across the lifespan with relatively stable social effects across cultures, appearing to function to recruit the attention and support of others. Although particular to humans, comparative research suggests crying visible emotional tears can be situated in a broader evolutionary pattern. Across a range of other social species, adults strategically redeploy juvenile-typical behaviors that can influence the responses of conspecifics. Recent primatological work has termed this paedomorphic signaling. We suggest this provides a valuable conceptual anchor for understanding the evolutionary origins of emotional tears in humans. We propose that paedomorphic signaling by adults is effective in eliciting care from conspecifics because, in humans and others species that invest in the care of dependent young, adults have evolved predispositions to attend to and respond to juvenile-like signals. Understanding emotional tears as a form of paedomorphic signaling provides a coherent evolutionary account of their potency, context-sensitivity, and developmental persistence and generates novel predictions that may guide future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).