Adult Crying: culture, gender, and personality based differences
The study investigated culture and gender based differences in crying proneness, crying frequency and general tendency to cry, as well as the correlation between basic personality traits (e.g. Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional stability, Autonomy) and a self-reported indices of crying. Participants were drawn from Arabians, Persian and Western culture, and a province with both Persian and Arabians ethnicities. Both genders form the three cultures completed two questionnaires: Adult Crying Inventory and Big Five Personality Inventory. The result of MANOVA showed, that there were cultural differences in crying proneness, but there were found cultural differences in crying frequency and general tendency to cry. The women reported a higher crying frequency, crying proneness and tendency to cry than men did. When correlated with personality traits, the study indicated that there was a negative association between Extraversion and tendency to cry but no significant differences between Extroversion and crying frequency or crying proneness and there was a negative correlation between Emotional Stability and tendency to cry but no significant differences between Emotional Stability crying proneness and crying frequency.Summaries of findings in two sentences.
Introduction
Crying is a common way for humans to express emotion. Vingerhoets, Bylsma and Rottenberg (2009), suggest that crying is a universal form of human expression that permeates human life, from the beginning (e.g. “the primal scream”) until death. Psychologists pay a lot of attention to human emotions and emotional expression, so it seems surprising little research has been devoted to the subject of crying. Individuals of all cultures and from different ages cry at certain times. Crying is known to be associated with sadness, such as at funerals. Crying is also common in positive-situations like weddings, winning a gold medal at the Olympics. Crying in adults is normally defined as a powerful emotional event (either empathic or personal) that results in the production of tears.
Vingerhoets, Cornelius, van Heck and Becht (2000) developed a model of Adult Crying, which focused on the subject of crying and antecedents of crying which has association between psychobiological (e.g. hormonal level, physical state), social pressures (e.g. location, presence of others, social norms and display rules) and cognitive (e.g. personality factors and demographic) factors.
The study was conducted because there has been previous researches from Van Hemert, van de Vijver and Vingerhoets (2011) which suggests that wealthy, extraverted, individuals and countries (with or support the freedom of expression act) have reported to have more of a propensity to cry than other countries. They also believe that there is a link between personality and adult crying. However I argue that someone’s culture has a more significant impact on adult crying rather than their personality, this is argued assomebody’s culture helps to shape their personality. This interpretation is supported by Darwin, when he disputed that of non western cultures cry more than those of western cultures, he especially emphasized on England. There are several situations where this is true. In Iraq and Iran there is an Islamic sect called ‘Shias’, this sect similarly like Britain have several memorial days. Iraq/Iran’s most renowned memorial day is called Ashura. The difference between Iraq/Iran (a non western culture) and Britain (a western culture), is that in Iraq/Iran it is a part of the culture to go through the mourning phase, however in Britain, people do not go through a mourning phase, instead they show respect by a moment of silence. Therefore this supports my argument, because even though people may have unsympathetic personalities, it is a part of their culture to cry, therefore it starts to build up and shape their personality into believing that they have to cry.
This study investigated crying frequency, crying proneness and tendency to cry in adult from different cultures.The three different crying measures are defined as, “crying frequency for estimates of actual crying episodes within a given period either measured retrospectively or in a concurrent design. In contrast crying proneness refers to the general reported propensity to cry in a certain situation. It seems that crying proneness reflects a more stable personality characteristic, whereas crying frequency is more dependent on specific environmental conditions and tendency to cry is a self-rating of general crying in comparison to others.”(Vingerhoets and Cornelius, 2012, p. 117, 141).
Culture and Crying studies:
The world is characterised by different cultures. The cultural differences are that people from different backgrounds see tragic events differently. Some cultures celebrate it where as others believe in the process of crying. For example in the case of death, a person from the Middle East will go through the process of mourning because it is seen as a sign of respect to the person who has died, and it marks a loss of a beloved person. Whereas other cultures such as Mexicans believe in Dia de los Muertos, which is the day of the dead, this is where people go and celebrate the death of family and friends. They celebrate the death of someone because they believe it is a good thing that you have lost someone, because they will rise to a better place.There is little systematic research the subject of cross-cultural differences in crying.Borgquist was the first researcher who studied different forms of crying in a more systematic manner, by using questionnaires and the accumulated knowledge of civilizations and ethnologists. Borgquist based his study on the respondents (39 male and 161 female) to 200 questionnaires sent out by President G. Stanley Hall (The first president of American Psychological Association). Borgquist (1906) found there were not many differences between the reports which obtained from 200 Americanscolleagues and the statements about crying episodes that he collected from ethnologists and missionaries around the world. He mentioned some differences in frequency of crying between cultures: “tears are less frequently shed among civilized people than among primitive people” (p.180). Borgquist based his claim on writings about different races, such as: African, Indian, Latin, Maori, Japanese, Sandwich Islander and Samoan.
Darwin (1872/1965) was the first person to propose the hypothesis that cultures differ in their frequency of crying. Darwin asserted that, in non-western cultures, crying was more frequent than in western culture, especially England. Darwin was also the person who was clearly open to the association of crying with positive and negative emotional states, such as: when felling a pain in the body distress or reading a story book. Borgquist and Darwin agreed that crying was more common in non-western cultures then western cultures. After Darwin and Borgquist, there was a 70 year gap before any new studies on cross-cultural crying. Szabo and Frey (1981) administrated a crying diary study comparing Americans and Hungarian psychology students. They asked male and female Hungarian and American students to keep a dairy record of monthly crying frequency. The result from the dairy study showed that monthly crying frequencies were 0.7 for Hungarian men, 3.1 for Hungarian women, 1.5 for American men and 5.3 for American women. Szabo and Frey (1981) assert that Hungarian reported less frequent crying episodes than American. They also found gender differences in the frequency of crying. Williams and Morris (1996) carried out a study among 448 British and Israeli students, aged between 20-42 years, in which they responded to questions on their crying behavior. They found cultural differences in self-reported crying frequency between Israelis and British. The estimated yearly crying frequency was 4.8-for Israeli men, 17.4 for Israeli women, 8.4 for British men and 31.7 for British women. Kraemer and Hastrup (1986) collected data among American college students (316 female and 181 male) in the study using the Crying Frequency Questionnaire. They asked participants to estimate the frequency of their yearly crying. The result of the study indicated that there weregender differences in the estimations of the frequency of their yearly crying and also found differences betweenindividuals in regards to the frequency of yearly crying. When William and Morris compared their results with the Kraemer and Hastrup (1986) results, William and Morris suggested that American in Kraemer study and British reported more crying frequency than Israelis. Vingerhoets and Becht (1997)collected data from 35 countries, with a sample size of 1470 men and 2100 women, their ages ranging from 16 to 28 years. The Adult Crying Inventory (ACI) questionnaire was used to do so. The researchers asked participants to estimate their crying frequency (the rate at which someone cried over a given period of time),cryingtendency (the urge to cry) and crying proneness(the liability to suffer from the act of crying) in the previous four weeks. Vingerhoets and Becht suggested that men reported lower crying frequencies, crying proneness and tendency to cry than women. Crying frequency and proneness varied between countries but crying tendency was typically higher in most countries, with little variation between countries. The details of their results were that females from; Chile, the United States, Turkey, the Netherlands and Sweden and males from the United States, Australia, Finland, Germany, Italy and Sweden reported higher crying frequencies than males from Bulgaria, Peru and Spin and females from Nigeria. Crying proneness was higher in Brazilian women (mean score=3.5) than Icelandic and Romanian women (mean score=2.6). Among the men Nepal had a higher score (mean=3.0) on crying proneness than Icelandic (mean score=1.5). Overall the results obtained from Vingerhoets and Bechtcross countries study showed that; Firstly in regards to thecrying frequency,males reported less crying frequencies than females: on average of 1.0 time and 2.7 times in four weeks for males and female, respectively, and 16.7% of the females and 55.4% of males reported have not cried in the past four weeks. Secondly in regards to self-rating of tendency to cry, females rated themselves higher than males. Thirdly the section of which crying proneness was asked to report, females reported higher (mean=3.0) score than male (mean=2.1). Crying frequency and proneness varied between countries but crying tendency was typically higher in most countries just at a lower score (mean= 4.3 and 3.5 for women and men respectively) was obtained from Nigeria, with little variation between countries. Over many years van Hemert, van de Vijver and Vingerhoets (2011) carried out systematic research on culture and gender based differences in crying. The study was carried out in 37 different countries, using 2,497 female and 3,218 male participants, with a focus on the countries in the last crying episode and crying proneness. Tendency to cry and the measures of the last crying episode results were taken from ISAC questionnaire, and used Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) and Big Five Personality.The researchers did not mention whether the questionnaires used were in English, a native language or translated to other languages. The result showed that firstly, crying was more correlated to the wealth and happiness. Secondly, individual living in countries with high levels of extraversion reported more crying than individual living in countries with lower levels of extraversion. The important finding of the study was related to the demandingness of climate and crying frequency. The result showed that people tend to shed more tears in moderate climates than in extreme cold or warm climates, this is because of the lifestyles which people live in given climates; people in cold countries spent more time at home and people in warm country spent more time out than inside. They found that individuals living in wealthy, extraverted, individuals and democratic (these measures related to the freedom of expression not to the suffering) and with higher extraversion (Big Five personality) countries reported more of a tendency to cry than other countries. From a cultural context crying could be observed as the experience of emotions and emotional events that lead to tears. There are no previous studies on differences in crying in Arab and Persian cultures. However, a number of studies (in different fields) have compared the two cultures and identified that they have unique differences, even though both cultures are from the Middle East and share similar beliefs. The results of a recent anthropological survey by Farjadian and Ghaderi (2009) showed that there is no close genetic association between Arabs and Persian. Another study by Haosseini and Khaghninezhad (2011) investigated the role of culture in learning English as a foreign language, in which the researchers asked 162 participants to complete the Integrative Tests. The result of this study showed that the Persian English learners did significantly better in the test than Arabs. (Haosseini and Khaghninezhad 2011) suggested that this difference is due to the cultural characteristics of Iranians and the result showed that culture plays an important role in the recall tests.
Gender and Crying studies:
The cultural stereotype is that women cry more than men and this is supported by many scientific studies. Another stereotype is that men are more likely to avoid crying in front of other people than women.
Bekker and Vingerhoets (1999) suggested that “one of the most pervasive stereotypes of sex differences in our culture is that of the emotional, labile women versus the rational, strong man” (p.11). This stereotype tells us that crying is more common in infants and women than men: this idea has been supported by scientific literature. Many research studies suggested that woman have a higher frequency of crying, as well as higher proneness and tendency to cry. The systematic studies that showed gender differences in crying.(Young 1936) assert that woman cry more frequently than men do, In this study they used a combined questionnaire in a different form in which they asked participants to reported their crying frequency during last 24 hours in period of 3 in half weeks. The result showed that 80 to 90 percent of participants reported their crying within social environment and only 20 to 10 percent refer to organic states such as injury, illness and fatigue. There was a possible weakness that has been identified, and this is that when college students filled out forms daily for three and a half weeks, they only filled them out for five days a week, missing two days that were Saturday and Sunday, these two days could be significant in a person’s crying pattern. William (1982) found that women cry more intensely and are more prone to cry than men, using a questionnaire that asked participants to estimate their crying in the last year. Frey (1983) asked males and females to record their crying for a month: the results showed that women cried more frequently and more intensely than men. Lombardo, Cretser, Lombardo and Mathis (1983) and (2001) argued that women cry more frequently, more intensely and with a higher proneness to crying than men. The frequency of crying is found less within men and more within women when watching films, at work and in general (Ross and Mirowsky 1984; Hastrup, Baker, Kraemer, and Bornstein 1986; Kraemer and Hastrup 1986; Choti, Marston, Holston and Hart 1987; Wanger, Hexel, Bauer and Kropiunigg 1997).Women also describe themselves more in relation to others (Bekker, 1993).
Williams and Morris (1996), and Vingerhoets and Becht(1987) claimed that women have higher crying frequency, crying intensity and crying proneness. Defruyt (1997) found that males reported a lower crying frequency than females. A gender differences study in tendency to cry (Becht, 1998) collected data from 29 countries and found that sex differences; women rated their general tendency to cry on average of mean of 5.9 compared to 3.3 for men. This finding showed that men self-rated themselves with a lower general tendency to cry than women.
Vingerhoets and Scheirs (2000) concluded (from reviewing all the above studies about gender differences) that, compared to women, adult men cry less frequently, are less prone to crying and cry for shorter time. (Vingerhoets, et, al., 2000) added that socialization plays the main role in creating gender differences in crying. The idea ofsocialisation could be applied on a gender or cultural context. The process for the individual to adjust to a certain group relates to the dissimilar appraisal process and so that process could lead to a situation that induces crying.
Peter, Vingerhoets and van Heck (2001) examined gender differences in crying. In this study, 48 men and 56 women completed the Adult Crying Inventory questionnaire part A and were requested to score their crying proneness, estimate their crying frequency and rate their tendency to cry. (Peter, el, al,. 2001) found gender differences in two measures of crying, with women reporting more proneness to cry and higher crying frequency than men.Becht, Poortinga and Vingerhoets (2001) carried out a study among 35 countries across Africa, America, Asia and Europe, with females and males responding to the Adult Crying questionnaire.(Becht, el, al,. 2001) claim that the gender difference in all cultures is that men are less likely to cry than women. Fischer, Mosquera, van Vianen and Manstead (2004) carried out study on cross-culture gender differences in 6 emotions, with data collected in 37 countries all over the world. The participants responded to a questionnaire for each of the six emotions: sadness, anger, fear, shame, guilt and disgust, and two emotional expressions: antagonism and crying. The result of emotional expression indicated that men reported crying less frequently compared to women. This difference is not necessarily homogeneous a cross countries. (vanHemert , el, al,. 2011) assert that there are large differences among females and males for tendency to cry and last crying episodes. In the study women reported crying more often than men. A recent study carried out by Santiago and Campbell (2013) that investigated the study of crying from anger and sadness in white British adolescents. (Santiago and Campbell 2013) monitored 96 boys and 101 girls. Participants were required to complete a questionnaire composed of four sections: one was a series of questions that were developed for the study, and 3 were official psychometric tests. The result showed that males and females were both more likely to cry in response to sadness than anger, with girls reporting that they cried more than boys in both emotions. This study also showed gender differences in the response to emotions. There are many questions about why there are gender differences in crying, many studies showed that gender differences are due to differences to the situations that inducing crying, and stereotype and biological factors.