Visible tears have been shown to enhance the perception of sadness. Whether the sadness perception from visible tears can occur automatically, which is essential for the rapid identification of emotional cues in real-life social interactions, is still unclear. We employed the reaction-time-based Implicit Association Test (IAT) to assess the implicit association of tears and sadness in two studies. Study 1 (N = 58) used sadness/non-sadness or negative/positive affect words as attribute pairs and images of tearless or tearful neutral expressions as targeted concepts. In Study 2 (N = 54), the neutral expressions were replaced with anger, disgust, fear, surprise, and happiness expressions with or without tears. Both studies revealed a strong tendency among participants to implicitly associate tears with sadness and negative affect. The results complemented findings from self-report measures by showing that the perception of sadness from visible tears can occur efficiently with little control.

中文翻译：

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无法抗拒在眼泪中看到悲伤：测量眼泪和悲伤之间的隐含关联

可见的眼泪已被证明可以增强对悲伤的感知。来自可见眼泪的悲伤感知是否可以自动发生，这对于在现实生活中的社交互动中快速识别情绪线索至关重要，目前尚不清楚。我们采用基于反应时间的内隐关联测试 (IAT) 来评估两项研究中眼泪和悲伤的内隐关联。研究 1 ( N  = 58) 使用悲伤/非悲伤或消极/积极的情感词作为属性对，将无泪或流泪的中性表情的图像作为目标概念。在研究 2 ( N = 54），中性表情被愤怒、厌恶、恐惧、惊讶和幸福的表情取代，有或没有泪水。两项研究都显示，参与者强烈倾向于将眼泪与悲伤和负面情绪联系起来。结果补充了自我报告测量的结果，表明可见眼泪对悲伤的感知可以在几乎没有控制的情况下有效地发生。