Golden tears: A cross-country study of crying in the Olympics.

This article studies tears of joy by exploring data on the behavior of gold medalists of all 450 individual events at the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympic Games at the end of the medalists' respective competitions and during the medal ceremonies. We find that women cry more than men, older athletes cry more than younger athletes, athletes from the host country cry more at the end of the competition, and athletes cry more when they receive information on their victory immediately after completing their task. When looking at the socioeconomic characteristics of athletes' countries, we find that men from countries with larger female labor force participation rates cry more than men from countries with lower female labor force participation, and athletes from countries with higher religious fractionalization cry less than those from countries with lower fractionalization. Finally, we find no relationship between the wealth of a country and the propensity of its athletes of any gender to cry. We discuss possible mechanisms that drive our results and suggest future directions for observational studies on emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The place of mathematical models in psychology and the social sciences.

Comments on the comments made by Brown et al. (see record 2013-24609-001). Brown et al. presented a scathing critique of the work of Fredrickson and Losada (see record 2005-11834-001) on the use of advanced mathematical methods (specifically, nonlinear dynamics) in describing changes in human emotions over time, terming it "entirely unfounded" (p. 802). However, I feel that although their critique serves an important role in identifying potential flaws in the theory, it goes too far by using terms such as "completely illusory 'applications' of mathematics" (p. 812) and may inadvertently discourage junior researchers in pursuing the use of mathematical methods in psychology.