Round-up: A trait that is barely heritable?

The most interesting articles that came to our attention this week

Emotional tears: What they are and how they work. Daniel Sznycer and colleagues explore the adaptive function of emotional tearing, which can be prompted by negative emotions (e.g., fear) or positive emotions (e.g., joy). They argue that tearing evolved as a means of inducing others to prevent harm or provide assistance to the tearer. It may also have evolved to signal which things or people the tearer values.

Greek Life, Academics, and Earnings. William Even and Austin Smith examine the impact of joining a fraternity or sorority on students’ grades and later earnings. Exploiting a university policy under which students could not join one during their first semester and had to have a certain GPA to join one thereafter, they find that joining reduces grades by up to 0.3 standard deviations and has no positive impact on later earnings.