There has been a lot of media attention in the last day to research about the impact of women crying upon men’s arousal.  The study (NPR write-up here) measured men’s reporting of arousal, testosterone levels, and activity level in brain areas related to sexual arousal, and found them lowered by smelling women’s tears.

My question (relating to sexual violence, and therefore somehow justifiable in this blog) is whether men who are more prone to sexual violence, do not show this reduction.  Like all such possible tests of propensity to violence, such a test has scary 1984-like implications, with great risks of false positives, but at least one might think about such a test as relevant to show whether one who has showed violent behavior in the past is likely to re-offend, or has the internal mechanisms to prevent it. (Of course one would have to find a way to filer out those not generally subject to arousal by women, regardless of their exposure to tears.)

According to the NPR story, a  researcher in the Netherlands thinks that the main effect is not on testosterone, but on a chemical that relates to human bonding and care-giving.  If so, the effect might be even more probative of violent propensity.

However, the NYT story says that tears had no effect on men”s mood or empathy, but it does not say how these were measured.

Science is going to be throwing at the legal system more and more opportunities for informing decision-making, but many of them are likely to bring significant risks of error.