When You Cry At Work, This Is What Happens

If you’re a baby, bursting into a puddle of tears (in public or in private) helps you get what you want. But if you’re a grown-up, crying at work will only get you left behind, a new study suggests.

In a series of three experiments, published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, researchers asked about 1,000 people their impression of a person in a photograph. In one photo, the person had visible tears on their cheek—making it obvious that they were crying—or showed no tears, because they’d been digitally removed. The presence of a tear made all the difference; people perceived the tearful person as sadder, warmer—but also less competent—than the very same person when the tears had been edited out. People looking at the photos said they were more likely to approach a tearful person to offer help than one without tears.

But in another experiment in the study, people were shown the photographs and asked a different question: “If you would arrive at work, and your manager asks you to finish an important project that afternoon, would you like to do that with this person?”

People in the study said they wanted to approach the woman in the photo to see if they could help, but weren’t too eager to work with her on a big project. “It seems that people who cry are seen as less competent persons in general,” says Niels van de Ven, associate professor in marketing at Tilburg University in the Netherlands and one of the authors of the study. “We did not give reasons about why people were crying, but still, it reflects badly on their perceived competence.”

Why adults cry has been a mystery to scientists for centuries, as TIME recently reported. One prominent theory is that crying signals to others an inability to cope with something happening at that moment, and tears trigger bystanders’ desire to help. Several studies, including this one, have shown that tears do compel people to approach someone who’s crying. But the new work shows that the effects of those tears are not all positive and may depend on context. “Work is definitely a place where crying seems to be not really appreciated,” van de Ven says. “Work is a setting where typically everything is about competence.”

Thankfully, though, the office is not the most popular spot to cry. In one comprehensive survey, 74% of people said the last place they cried was at home, while only 6% reported crying at work or school. Wondering how your crying habits measure up to the those of your colleagues? Take our quiz to find out what kind of crier you are.

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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Hate Needles? Here’s How to Deal When You Go to the Doctor

What you’re experiencing is called a vasovagal response, a reflex that occurs when your body overreacts to certain triggers, like blood or needles. The triggers stimulate a nerve that then causes your heart rate to slow down and your blood pressure to drop. As a result, you may suddenly feel warm or light-headed, turn pale, or lose consciousness.

To get through a blood draw when you feel dizziness coming on, try the applied tension technique: Tense the muscles in your body for 10 to 15 seconds, then release for 20 to 30 seconds, and continue. This helps raise your blood pressure, making you less likely to faint. Ask to lie down, too—then look away so you can’t see the needle entering your arm or the blood flowing.

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It’s not entirely understood why some folks have vasovagal responses and others don’t. The reassuring news is that these spells are usually harmless—and you shouldn’t need treatment if they happen sporadically and aren’t interfering with your quality of life. But if your reaction is constant and so bad that you dread getting immunizations, medical tests, or surgeries, you should consider seeing a psychologist who can help you work through your fear using exposure therapy (in which you practice being in the presence of needles until you’re desensitized to them).

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12 Horrifying True Stories of Doctors Behaving Badly

A lot of the time, doctors say and do just the right thing and we leave happy. This story is about the other times—the ones when a highly-trained MD blurts out something so rude, cruel, clueless, or shocking you want to send them back to Bedside Manner 101. My personal favorite WTF moment was when I went to a very young gynecologist complaining of a urinary tract infection and she said, “I'd expect this more from my patients in their 20s who are still having lots of sex.”

Okay, Dr. Gross-Stereotyper! Who doesn’t, incidentally, know much about UTIs! 

Then there was the moment, mid C-section with son #2, when I overheard my OB instruct his student, “You have to be very careful not to nick the bladder or bowel.” Yes, please! Good thing I had an epidural in me or I would have leapt right off the table.

Awkward as they were, though, my exchanges were nothing compared with these tales of physicians with absolutely no filter:

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Jo, 48, Brooklyn, NY

“When I told my ob-gyn (who I had been going to for years) that was I thinking of becoming a single mother he said, ‘You will never date again, no man would want you.’ And he said that I should take the money I had saved and 'buy a condo in South Carolina.' I didn’t stay long enough in his office to ask, 'Why South Carolina!?’”

Marian, 26, San Diego, CA

“When he was working on a filling, my (former) dentist said, 'Oops.' I think there are certain people who must remove words like 'Oops' from their vocabularies: surgeons, ob-gyns, bridge engineers. Dentists, who literally work inside your face, fall into that category.”

Elisa, 49, Mamaroneck, NY

“August, 2000, I was newly pregnant after many, many months of trying. I started bleeding. The ob-gyn on call, who was not one of my regular doctors, said to me, 'Well, if you’re going to lose it, you’re going to lose it.' I was hysterical. An hour later, my gastroenterologist (I have ulcerative colitis) returned my call. He calmed me down, and sure enough the baby was fine.”

Laura, 31, Astoria, NY

“When my primary care doctor was unavailable, I went to another doctor in her practice. I thought I was having a heart problem (thankfully, it turned out to be a pulled sternum and exercise-induced asthma). Instead of reassuring me that my scary symptoms weren’t too serious, the doctor spent an hour telling me about how she could have been an Olympic-level runner, but then became a doctor, and that she went to Harvard. I stopped listening. The brags were the opposite of good bedside manner … more like good BRAGside manner.”

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Nicole, 23, New York, NY

“When I was getting my first ever gyno exam at age 21, I winced at the pain of her inserting the speculum, and she scoffed and said, 'Oh stop, it’s no bigger than your boyfriend.’”

Jay, 45, Carrollton, VA

“A doctor told that my heart beats too fast. He said everyone’s heart has a finite number of beats and that I was fine but I was going to use my beats up faster than most other people. I believe that was the day my anxiety needed to be medicated.”

Lindsey, 23, Philadelphia, PA

“When I was about 13, I had a strange rash on my arm. My mom took me to the (male) pediatrician and he was unsure what it was. He asked if I was on my period, which I was and he replied, 'Oh, well I guess it could be Toxic Shock Syndrome, but what do I know? I’m not a girl!' I couldn’t believe he could be so sexist and also trivialize a serious health problem.”

Melissa, 45, San Francisco, CA

"Mid root canal, I heard the oral surgeon curse loudly enough for me to take my earbuds out, just in time to hear her say, 'I can’t believe I just did that! Well, we can fix it, I guess.”

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Sara, 51, New York, NY

“I have deformed, arthritic hips and went to a very famous holistically-oriented doctor to see if there was anything I could do instead of surgery. He swiftly handed me a script for 90 Oxycontin with refills. 'I don’t think I need a drug addiction on top of my other problems,' I told him. 'Oh you won’t get addicted,’ he pshawed. This was years ago, but I don’t think he ever read a newspaper.”

Cathy, 39, Seattle, WA

“I was undergoing fertility treatments and feeling really hormonal from the drugs. When I told my doctor, he said, 'I think you need to get out of the house more. Why don’t you get a job at the mall?’ As if working at Cinnabon was the answer.”

Sue, 49, Lenox, MA

“After a doctor started to perform a minor surgical procedure on me in her office, she said—after SHE was not able to control my bleeding—'You’re making a mess!' And she finished with 'You might need to stay and clean up your mess.' I later found that she was let go from her previous practice for poor bedside manner.”

Maureen, 37, Locust Valley, NY

“My tooth cracked. The dentist asked what caused it. I said, 'Unfortunately, I enjoy 8 blow pops a day.” And he said, 'Good practice, eh?' What a creep!“

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How You Feel About Facebook Likes Says Something About Your Personality

Do you feel a rush every time a Facebook photo or status update gets a new “like” (and a little depressed when your posts are ignored)? The way you answer that question may reveal a part of your personality: people with a true sense of purpose are less likely to be emotionally affected by social media likes than those without, according to a new Cornell University study.

“Purposeful people noticed the positive feedback, but did not rely on it to feel good about themselves,” says Anthony Burrow, PhD, co-author of the study and assistant professor of human development at Cornell University.

Writing in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, Burrow and his co-author define a sense of purpose as a “self-organizing life aim that organizes and stimulates goals, manages behaviors, and provides a sense of meaning.” People with a strong sense of purpose tend to agree with statements such as “To me, all the things I do are worthwhile” and “I have lots of reasons for living.”

To see how people’s online lives might be affected by their senses of purpose, the researchers conducted two experiments. They hypothesized that those with stronger senses of purpose would get less of a self-esteem rush from virtual likes, “because they are already guided by a sense of connection with, and service to, others.”

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In the first study, they asked 250 active Facebook users from around the United States how many likes they typically got on photos they posted. People who usually got more thumbs-ups also tended to have higher self-esteem—but only among those who had low levels of purpose, based on a six-question test to measure “life engagement.”

For those who had higher levels of purpose, on the other hand, self-esteem remained the same, on average, regardless of how many likes they got.

In the second study, 100 Cornell University students were asked to post selfies to a mock social media site, and were then told that their photo had received either a high, low, or average number of likes. Again, getting a high number of likes was associated with higher self-esteem only among those with less purpose. For those who scored higher in purposefulness, number of likes had no effect on self-esteem.

This makes sense, says Burrow: Purposeful people have the ability to see themselves in the future, he explains, and act in ways that help them achieve their long-term goals. Therefore, they’re more immune to feelings of—or dependence on—immediate gratification.

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The findings highlight the protective effects that having a purpose can have on a person’s mental health, he adds. While it’s nice to receive compliments, online or otherwise, it shouldn’t be your main source of pride.

“Otherwise, on days when you receive few likes, you’ll feel worse,” he says. “Your self-esteem would be contingent on what other people say and think.”

Instead, he says, it’s healthier to find confidence in more permanent aspects of your self-worth. “You want to show up with rigidity: ‘I know who I am and I feel good about that.’”

Previous studies have been done on purposefulness and its role on health and self-esteem, but most have looked at it as a buffer against negative or stressful events. Research has suggested it may protect against heart disease and dementia, and may even help people live longer and take better care of themselves as they age.

But this is the first study to show that having a sense of purpose can also blunt the emotional impact of positive events, as well. This is an important part of the discussion, says Burrow, since staying even-keeled—through bad situations and good ones—may be more valuable to health and wellbeing, long-term. It may even help keep us from getting an inflated sense of confidence or reading too much into small victories.

“If a student takes a test, gets a great score, you don’t want him to get a big head and back off—you want him to keep working and do better,” he says. “Just like you want to acknowledge the bad things but not quit, you also want to be able to acknowledge the good things but not get carried away with celebrating.”

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So how do you find your sense of purpose, if you don’t feel like your life is particularly worthwhile? There’s no solid research on what works best, but Burrow says that shifting your focus to the future—and really thinking about what you want that future to look like—is a good starting point.

It may also help, he says, to zero in on a hobby you’ve spent a lot of time on, a role model you’d like to emulate, or a moment in your life that’s had a big impact on you, positive or negative.

“In research where people are asked to nominate the source of their purpose, they tend to name one of these three things,” he says.

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