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.

1

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 as somebody’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

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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 Americans colleagues

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

3

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

were gender differences in the estimations of the frequency of their yearly crying and also

found differences between individuals 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),crying tendency (the urge to cry) and crying proneness (the liability

4

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 Becht cross countries study showed that; Firstly

in regards to the crying 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

5

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

6

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 of socialisation 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

7

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. (van Hemert , 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.

Personality and Crying studies:

There is enough evidence showing us that individuals differ in crying proneness and crying

frequency. The studies below show that there is a relationship between personality and

crying. Personality is the characteristics and qualities a person holds, including their traits

and consistency. Personality is developed within the society rather than inherited. This is

because people’s emotions and the way they treat or react to specific events vary on

8

how/where/when they were brought up and their surroundings. The prone of crying has

been found to associate itself with a variety of factors based on an individual. The following

are included: Gender, socialization, emotional/traumatic events in life and the transition of

parenthood. Never the less, personality applies its key role in crying. This has shown in

reports in which women have been reported to cry more than men do during their

adulthood.

Williams (1982) was the first researcher to explore systematically the role of personality in

crying. In this study 40 participants (male and female) responded to questionnaires that

measured crying proneness and personality (assessing their empathy, psychoticism,

femininity, masculinity, neuroticism and extraversion). (Williams 1982) found a positive

proneness was correlated to neuroticism and a negative association with masculinity.

Furthermore Vingerhoets, van Den Berg, Kortekaas, Van Heck and Croon (1993) have shown

a positive correlation between crying frequency and neuroticism in both males and females.

The results from this study suggest that men with high self-esteem cried more easily and

more often.

Defruyt (1997) investigated gender and individuals differences in adult crying. In this study

105 participants (male and female) responded to complete three questionnaires: 1)

International Study Adult Crying questionnaire (ISAC) 2) The Big Five personality and 3) NEO

personality Inventory. The analysis of the study showed that Emotional Stability was

significantly correlated with crying frequency and crying as a coping aspect of crying and

Extraversion was considerable correlated with crying. (Peter, el, al,.2001) found a

correlation between crying and personality. Women displayed a negative relation between

Emotional Stability and crying for both negative and positive reasons. For men, there was a

negative correlation between crying for negative reason and Emotional Stability. Moreover,

there were significant negative relationships between Emotional Stability and all crying

indices (i.e., crying for negative reasons, crying for positive reasons, crying frequency and

crying proneness). For men there was a negative correlation between Emotional stability

and only crying for negative reasons.

Rottenberg, Bylsma, Wolvin and Vingerhoets (2008) carried out a study into individuals’

different approaches to crying. (Rottenberg, et, al, .2008) monitored 196 female participants

from the Netherlands. Participants required completed 6 questionnaires and the result

showed that there was a relationship between personality characteristics and crying

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frequency and crying proneness. (Rottenberg, et, al,. 2008) found that a higher level of

Extraversion, Neuroticism and Empathy were related to a self- reported ease of crying.

Moreover, individuals with higher levels of Empathy and Extraversion reported crying more

frequently. (Van Hemert, el, al,.2011) were used two personality questionnaires across

cultures and the results showed that Big Five extraversion has a significant positive

correlated to the crying variables. However, there was a not relationship between EPQ

extraversion, and crying and also there was not significant correlation between neuroticism

scores (Big Five Personality and EPQ) and crying.

The Present Study

The aim of the present study was to examine crying proneness, crying frequency and

tendency to cry in 3 cultures (Arabs, Western and Persian) in different countries. The

present study was to investigated, how different cultures, and personalities determine adult

crying and compared cross-cultural gender differences in crying.

The Hypotheses are as follows:

1. There will be differences between the performance of Arab, Persian and Western on

crying frequency, crying proneness and general tendency to cry.

2. There will be significant differences between genders on crying frequency, crying

proneness and tendency to cry.

3. There will be interaction between gender and culture.

4. Extraversion and Emotional Stability will have an association with the three measures of

crying.

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Methodology

Participants

Sixty participants from three ethnic groups (Arabs, Persian, and Western) were used, with

an equal number of females and males drawn from each group. The sample consisted of

friends and relatives in the ages range of 20-45. The questionnaires were sent to 160

participants and 60 participants (mean=33.27, SD=7.07) completed the questionnaire. Arabs

(mean age=34.62, SD=7.04, rang age=25, N=21), Persian (mean age=31, SD=6.95, rang age=

23, N=15) and participants originated from a Western background (mean age=33.5,

SD=7.13, rang age=25, N=24). Participants were contacted by email, telephone or in person,

and the study then took place via emails or post. There were no personality measures

available for 17 participants (6 female and 3 female from Persian group, 3 male and 4

female from Arabs group, and 1 female from western group) because the Big Five

Personality questionnaire presented in English version. Therefore, the analysis of the

influence of personality measures on crying variables was carried out on a smaller number

of participants.

Materials

The three crying measures were derived from the Adult Crying Inventory, which applied in

the (Vingerhoets and Cornelius, 2001) see Appendix the ACI questionnaire has been

translated into Arabic and Farsi. The Arabic questionnaire (ACI-R) had already been

translated by the (Vingerhoets and Cornelius, 2001) (see Appendix) and the ACI

questionnaire (Farsi version) was translated by a professional translator from Iran. The ACI-

part A is limited to the following measures: 1) Crying Proneness (CP) was assessed by 54

items regarding the situations and emotions that may induce crying. 2) Estimated Crying

Frequency (ECF), Can you estimate how often you have cried in the last four weeks? 3)

Estimated Crying Tendency (ECT): How would you rate your general tendency to cry?

Participants were requested to rate their Crying Proneness using 54 items on a Likert-scale

(1= I never cry; 7= I always cry). Self-rating their general crying tendency used a 10-point

scale (1= I hardly ever cry; 10= I can cry very easily) and for crying frequency there were no

minimum or maximum scores (see Appendix). To measure the five basic personality factors,

the Five Factor Personality Inventory (FFPI) (Hendriks, Hofstee and De Raad (1999) was

11

used. The questionnaire consists of 50 items (for example; 1. Am the life of the party, 2. Feel

little concern for others, 3. Am always prepared, 4. Get stressed out easily) and participants

responded using a five-point Likert scale (1= Inaccurate to 5= very Accurate). For further

details see Appendix. The FFPI questionnaire measures the following dimensions:

Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Autonomy. A

Qualtrics system was used in the form of an online survey in which two questionnaires were

formed, both used in the study.

Design

This study used a between-subjects design. One of independent variable was gender with

two levels (female and male) and another independent variable was culture with three

levels (Arabic, Persian and Western). The dependent variables were crying measures (crying

frequency, tendency to cry and crying proneness and personality measures (Extraversion,

Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability and Autonomy).

The measures used for culture and gender were Nominal. For crying proneness, crying

frequency, tendency to cry, Extraversion, agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional

Stability and Autonomy were measured using scales.

Procedure

Two questionnaires were presented separately to each participant. They completed the

questionnaires in two stages. The questionnaires were delivered in one of three ways: 1) by

post, with self-addressed envelopes and returned by post. 2) face to face to the participant,

and 3) via email which used Qualtrics system . In the first stage, participants completed the

Adult Crying inventory (ACI) questionnaire and in the second and final stage, participants

completed the Big Five Personality questionnaire, the time for each participant was

approximately 20 minutes for both questionnaires.

12

Result

Table 1. Means and Standard deviations are presented for cultures and crying.

Crying Culture Mean Male

S.D Male

Mean Female

S.D Female

Crying Proneness

Crying Frequency

Tendency to Cry

ArabsPersianWesternTotal

ArabsPersianWesternTotal

ArabsPersianWesternTotal

76.055.8374.2569.9

1.540.171.751.19

3.273.04.53.43

47.9246.8951.746.71

2.540.4081.712.04

3.232.373.692.99

166.678.6136.9131.05

12.05.223.956.307

5.85.336.255.92

69.2730.8954.5861.89

17.67.14.1710.35

2.692.342.552.50

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Table 2. Mean and standard deviations are presented for personality

Culture Extraversion Agreeablenes

s

Conscientiousness Emotional

Stability

Autonomy

Arabs

Mean

N

S.D

29.36

14

6.88

33.28

14

7.86

34.14

14

5.05

30.43

14

5.53

30.07

14

5.87

Persian

Mean

N

S.D

31.33

6

5.72

34.5

6

7.61

34.0

6

4.52

27.67

6

4.76

32.33

6

4.23

Western

Mean

N

S.D

34.22

23

7.65

41.26

23

7.05

34.91

23

5.76

31.26

23

9.55

39.17

23

4.61

Total

Mean

N

S.D

32.23

43

7.36

37.72

43

8.18

34.53

43

5.27

30.49

43

7.83

35.26

43

6.51

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Table 3. Mean and standard deviations are presented for personality by gender.

Gender Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Emotional

Stability

Autonomy

Male

Mean

N

S.D

32.27

15

7.06

33.73

15

8.15

33.87

15

5.03

32.8

15

5.23

33.4

15

6.54

Female

Mean

S.D

32

28

7.64

39.86

28

7.49

34.89

28

5.47

29.25

28

8.76

36.25

28

6.39

Total

Mean

N

S.D

32.23

43

7.36

37.72

43

8.18

34.53

43

5.28

30.49

43

7.83

35.26

43

6.52

Table 1 and 2 and 3 are represented the summery of means and standard deviations for 3

cultures and three difference measure of crying and standard deviations for personality

aspects by gender.

Culture

Descriptive Statistics indicated that Persians (group 1), (means=69.46, S.D=38.24) obtained a

lower score than Arabs (group 2), (means=119.14, S.D=73.87) and Westerners (control

group), (mean=126.45, S.D=73.87) in regards to crying proneness. There was a similar score

15

for crying frequency in Persian culture (means=3.2, S.D=6.57) and Western culture

(mean=3.58, S.D=3.93) but there was higher score for Arabs (mean=6.52, S.D=13.08). There

was not much differences in the scores for; Arabs (mean=4.47, S.D=3.18), Persians

(mean=4.4, S.D=2.55) and Westerners (mean=5.9, S.D=2.75) tendency to cry. A one-way

between-groups multivariate analysis of variance was performed to investigate the effect of

culture on crying. Preliminary assumptions testing (Pillai’s Trace, Wilks’s Lambda, Hotelling’s

Trace and Roy’s Larges Root tests) indicated no serious violations. The results showed that

cultural had a significant effect on crying proneness (F (2, 54) =4.58, p=.014). But culture had

no significant effect on crying frequency (F (2, 54) =1.39, p= 0.26), or on tendency to cry on

crying frequency. Cultural also had no significant effect (F (2, 54) = 5.32, p= 0.49) on tendency

to cry. A Post-Hoc pair wise comparison using the Bonferroni test showed that, for crying

proneness, the significant differences were between Arabian and Persian cultures (p=0.02)

and between Persion and Western cultures (p=0.005). There was no significant difference

(p=1.00) between Arabian and Western cultures. Persian culture was significantly different

from the others in crying proneness.

Gender:

The result of the Descriptive Statistic of the three cultures was higher crying proneness

score for females (mean=131.05, S.D=61.89) than males (mean=69.9, S.D=46.71). For crying

frequency, there was higher score for females (mean=6.3, S.D=10.35) than males

(mean=1.19, S.D=2.04) and for tendency to cry there was a higher score for females

(mean=5.92, S.D=2.5) than for males (mean=3.42, S.D=2.99). A one-way between-groups

multivariate analysis of variance was performed to investigate the effect of gender on

crying. Preliminary assumptions testing (Pillai’s Trace, Wilks’s Lambda, Hotelling’s Trace and

Roy’s Larges Root tests) indicated no serious violations. The results indicated that gender

had a significant effect crying proneness (F (1, 54) = 14.56, p=0.0001) a significant effect on

crying frequency (F (1, 54=5.94, p=0.18) and significant effect on tendency to cry (F (1, 54) = 7.55,

p=0.008).

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Gender and Culture:

The interaction between gender and culture was not significant for crying proneness (F (2, 54)

=1.78, P=0.17), crying frequency (F (2, 54) =1.1, p=0.34) and tendency to cry (F (2, 54) =0.84,

p=0.92).

Personality:

The Descriptive Statistic for personality showed; Extraversion (mean=32.23, N=43,

S.D=7.36), Agreeableness (mean=37.72, N=43, S.D=8.81), Conscientiousness (mean=34.53,

N=43 S.D=5.27), Emotional Stability (mean=30.48, N=43, 7.83) and Autonomy (mean=35.25,

N=43, S.D=6.51). The Pearson’s correlation Coefficient indicated that there was a significant,

moderate, a negative, correlation between Extraversion (r=-0.46, N=43, p=0.002) and

tendency to cry. An increase in Extraversion tended to be associated with a decrease in

tendency to cry. The correlation between Extraversion and crying frequency was not

significant (r=-0.16, N=43, p=0.29), and nor was the correlation between Extraversion and

crying proneness (r=-0.24, N=43, p=0.11).

The Pearson’s correlation Coefficient indicated that there was a significant moderate

negative correlation between Emotional Stability and tendency to cry (r=-0.34, N=43,

p=0.02). An increase in Emotional Stability tended to be associated with a decrease in

tendency to cry. There was a significant weak positive correlation between Agreeableness

and tendency to cry (r=0.31, N=43, p=0.04). As Agreeableness increases the tendency to cry

also tended to be increased. The correlation between Emotional Stability and crying

frequency was not significant (r=-0.17, N=43, p=0.26) and nor was the correlation between

Emotional Stability and crying proneness (r=-0.25, N=43, p=0.106). The correlation between

Agreeableness and crying Frequency (r=0.82, N=43, p=0.60) was not highly significant and

nor was the correlation between Agreeableness and crying proneness (r=0.25, N=43,

p=0.105). The correlation between Conscientiousness and crying proneness also did not

show a huge significance (r=0.16, N=43, p=0.3) and nor did the correlation between

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Conscientiousness and tendency to cry (r=0.001, N=43, p=0.1) and nor was the correlation

between Conscientiousness and crying frequency (r=0.17, N=43, p=0.27). The correlation

between Autonomy and crying proneness was not highly significant either (r=-0.015, N=43,

p=0.92) and nor was the correlation between Autonomy and tendency to cry (r=-0.03, N=43,

p=0.86) the correlation between Autonomy and crying frequency also did not have a great

significance either. (r=-0.17, N=43, p=0.26).

Discussion

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