Adult crying has always been a contentious issue among all adults. Is it right for an adult to cry? How will people take an adult who cries often? What are the reactions when you spot an adult crying? These are some of the questions that run through everyone's mind when the thought of adult crying features in their mind. Many adults have learnt to conceal their tears in public but this cannot be said to be the same case when it comes to them being all alone in their homes. This being an issue in the society I set out to study more about adults who cry and how often this happens. To perform this study though I decided I would not generalize on all adults but I would base my study on personality, gender, and culture as the factors that are the variables among adults who cry.
In children, crying is mainly a way in how they express their emotions that range from wanting something to being in pain. One thing though is that in adults, crying is of a different level. An adult can express his/her feelings in various ways depending on the situation hence crying in adults is incomparable to that of children because adults have adapted to some situations in life and base their aspect of crying on factors that influenced them during growth, such as the culture they passed through, the personality they have acquired and what they have learned about being of a certain gender.
The following factors, personality, gender, and culture, are the most influential when it comes to crying as an adults. This can be seen in say several cultures that do not believe that a man should shed tears in public but this opinion is not applicable to the women. Boys in such cultures are brought about under the notion and the stereotypical belief that it is not right to shed a tear because when they become men they are figures to be viewed as strong and crying will be seen as a sign of weakness. This belief is majorly held by the cultures that still uphold tradition. Adult crying as you can depict from the above example is that culture and gender are highly considered as factors that influence adult crying. When it comes to personality, you will get that people are built with different emotional statures. Some are very emotional while others will take centuries for them to even think of crying.
[...] Excessive Crying in Adults: Causes & Solutions. Yahoo Contributor Network. http://voices.yahoo.com/excessive-crying-adults-causes-solutions- 6311904.html. Lummaa V., Vuorisalo T., Barr RG, Lehtonen L. (1998). Why cry? Adaptive significance of intensive crying in human infants. Evolution and Human Behavior; 19: 193-202. Montagu, A. (1959). Natural Selection and the Origin and Evolution of Weeping in Man. Science (3388), 1572-1573.Vingerhoets, F.J. Van Bussel, & A.J.W. Boelhouwer (Eds.), The (Non) expression of Emotions in Health and Disease (pp. 303-321). Tilburg: Tilburg University Press Jansz, J. [...]
[...] (1994). Gender differences in personality: A meta-analysis. Psychology Behavior 429-456. Fischer, A., Mosquera, P., & Vianen, A. (2004). Gender and Culture Differences in Emotion. Emotion 2004, Vol No 87–94. Copyright 2004 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. Fischer, A.H., (1993). Sex Differences in Emotionality: Fact or Stereotype. Feminism and Psychology 303-318. Frey, W.H. (1985). Crying: The Mystery of Tears. Minneapolis, MN: Winston Press. Grossman, M., & Wood, W. [...]
[...] Is it right for an adult to cry? How will people take an adult who cries often? What are the reactions when you spot an adult crying? These are some of the questions that run through everyone's mind when the thought of adult crying features in their mind. Many adults have learnt to conceal their tears in public but this cannot be said to be the same case when it comes to them being all alone in their homes. This being an issue in the society I set out to study more about adults who cry and how often this happens. [...]
[...] (Cornelius, Vingerhoets, Becht & Van Heck, 2000; Frey, 1985). Women have scored low on self-esteem compared to the score in men (Showers and Buswell). Women have also been observed to exhibit negative emotions more than men, such as shame, anxiety, depression and anger (Lynn & Martin, 1997). In recent studies, there has been a hypothesis that gender variations in depression and various other negative emotions may be because of the high levels of sensitivity that have been observed in women to these (Rossy & Thayer, 2000). [...]
[...] Literature review Gender, Culture and Personality Do women and men live diverse lives emotionally, and do they express and experience their emotions in diverse techniques, or with varying intensity or frequency (Fischer, Mosquera, and Vianen, 2004). This is one factor that has been under study and researchers have come up with review on how gender influences crying in adults. Crying has been seen to be an act devised to look for social empathy from others. This can even be seen when a dog kind of empathizes with a stranger who is in a foul mood and is crying. Adult crying has been witnessed more on women compared to male adults. [...]
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