The Effects of Culture, Gender and Personality in Crying Among Adults - Literature review Example

Adult Crying First School Affiliation We are interested in the results of a study that will be conducted on a total of 150 participants/individuals. The participants participating in this study will include an equal number of males and females in each culture group. The sample consists of friends and relatives, aged between 20 and 45 years old, who will be volunteers from the three different cultures. The sample size will be fifty participants from an Arab culture, fifty from a European culture, and fifty from an Iranian culture. Our interest in the results will be to come up with an estimate statistical review of the effects of difference in culture, gender and personality in crying among adults. Introduction 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 (Bell & Ainsworth, 1972). 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 (Cornelius, 1997). 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. Some scientists recommended that the only purpose of shedding tears was to secure the eye. Darwin (1872) identified that the muscle around the eye that are contracting were the cause for shedding tears. The contraction was assisted avoid the facial muscles from turning puffy with blood. He was also of the belief that tears are the only exemption to the evolutionary performance of all actions and body components. Montagu (1959) did not agree with Darwin and recommended that tears were a necessity for the human species survival. The tears contain an anti-bacterial compound lysozyme, which is hypothesized as being a safety procedure against fast dehydration of the mucous walls and the following infection of ocular and upper breathing illnesses (Montagu 1959). The importance of crying in some studies has been concluding to be the fact that it removes excessive quantities of prolactin out of the body and thus restoring biochemical conditions that lead to an improvement in mental status (Frey, 1985). Crying is viewed as a release of heightened emotions in oneself. It can be caused by several situations, for example, you might spot an adult crying because something good has happened to them (Belle, 1987). This happiness is however cited not to be the reason for the cry but that the adult is crying due to some other stressful events in their life that have been building up within (Horton, 2010). It is always a wonder how some individuals are seen and registered to cry more than others in cases of sadness, depressing moments, when scared and when overwhelmed by emotions (Kottler, 1996; Kottler & Montgomery, 2001). To help understand this, I will embark on a study in a bid to uncover the reason behind the difference in crying pattern. I will not be analyzing all the factors that influence crying, but my study will major on three very common factors that are prevalent and divergent in individuals in all the parts of world. I will thus be studying the effects of gender, personality and culture on crying among adults. I will be basing my study on Arab, European and Iranian cultures to collect the desired results. Results will be analyzed to satisfy the hypothesis. To get good and reliable results, some things have to be considered during the study. It is evident that people who have been diagnosed with depression may be seen to cry often. Hence this study is majorly on normal people who suffer from no form of depression. By this I mean that we want all other factors that can cause crying to be at a constant in all participants and the only evident variation should be on the gender, personality and culture. 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 (Hill & Martin, 1997). Adult crying has been witnessed more on women compared to male adults. This divergent observation on adult crying on both male and female has led to conclusions that gender as a role in adult crying. One of the factors that has been seen to lead to this divergence in character is the fact that from a small age, boys are encouraged not to cry and if need be, they should not do this publicly. As infants, you will often get that the rate of crying in both male and female is at per (Lummaa, Vuorisalo, Barr, & Lehtonen, 1998). But as growth continues, the crying starts to reduce in both male and female but at different degrees of reduction. In female, the reduction in crying is gradual and thus they are seen to cry even in their adulthood but in men, the crying reduces significantly and it may even cease completely in several men. This has been attributed to the fact that at a small age the boy is told that crying is not for men. Crying has even been classified to be done by weaklings and no man would enjoy being referred to as a weakling. Thus they reduce or cease their crying. Discouragement from crying among ladies during growth is at its minimal hence you will find that almost every adult lady has cried severally over a certain period of time. A significant discovery in research on crying is that towards puberty there isn’t a variation between females and males in the number of times they cry (Hastrup, Kraemer, Bornstein & Trezza, 2001). This changes when the male starts to show traits involved with powerful emotions and will therefore exhibit hostility more than the females and thus a reduction in the crying intensity. Another observation that has been made based on gender is that in the adults who cry, the women are observed to cry intensely than men. This variation in the intensity is not an indication that crying has more effects or benefits towards women than it has to men. In a study, despite the variation, the benefits of crying were recorded as similar in both men and women. They all said they felt better after crying. Has there been any effort to explain these differences in gender? The differences in gender on basis of emotions have commonly been accounted for in relationship with the cultural and social setting in an environment, particularly as an outcome of socialization based on stereotypical ideas on gender (Shields, 2002; Jansz, 2000; Brody & Hall, 1993). There is consideration of emotions being part of the social roles that both men and women normally hold (Eagly, 1987; Alexander & Wood, 2000; Grossman & Wood, 1993; Eagly & Wood, 1991; Brody & Hall, 1993). Conventionally, in Western business societies, women have been observed to have nurturing and domestic roles more than men, where there foremost task is to take emotional care of other people around her. Men on the other hand, will often cater for the material needs and will thus be in roles in the business world more than women (Fischer, Mosquera, and Vianen, 2004; Fischer, 1993). This difference in roles bring about variation in status and power where the female role provides for lesser status and power than that of the male. For successful performance of these social tasks, unique emotions and ways of expressing these emotions are required. Powerful emotions are those that displays one’s assertiveness and power, such as contempt and anger. Powerless emotions on the other hand imply vulnerability, internal blame, and an individual’s inability to manage an environment with negative events, such as guilt, sadness, shame and fear. A role of a male of high status focused at competition, power and autonomy would reinforce strong emotions, but prevent weak feelings, whereas in the role of a female it would prevent powerful feelings and promote powerless feelings, because the powerless emotions assist to manage harmony/peace in social relations with minimal hostility or rage. Other studies and researches on social behavior have come up in a bid to try and explain or offer an alternative explanation as to the reason behind the differences observable in emotions between men and women. They have argued from a biological point of view to explain these differences in emotion. They have said that the influences by the hormone are the reason behind the regular actions of crying in women. (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). Women have been observed to be more self-conscious than men a fact that makes them sensitive to their surrounding and hence a small negative aspect may make her feel bad to the point of crying (Feingold, 1994). Those with cases of neuroticism are often going to cry more often than those without. The Iranians are at a higher risk of suffering from multiple sclerosis than the Persians (Sharafaddinzadeha, Moghtaderib, Majdinasaba, Dahmardehb, Kashipazhaa, & Shalbafana, 2012). It leads to social dependence and thus the Iranians are more likely to cry than the Persians. Studies have shown that there will always be variation between how a person expresses their emotion, to what intensity they are going to express their feelings and how able they are to control both the powerless emotions and powerful emotions based on the personality, gender and culture that an individual exhibits. Present study Having reviewed the various studies that have taken place in the past, I set out to do my own study to get my own results that I would use to satisfy the hypothesis. The study is interested in the European culture, the Arab culture and the Iranian culture. These cultures will be under scrutiny on how frequent there is an adult crying in each culture. The study will also involve both male and female so that we can also analyze the influence of gender on adult crying. The study is also interested in finding out if there is a link between gender and culture that affects the emotional expression through crying among adults. There will be a total of 150 individuals participating in this study. To have reliable results based on gender, the number of male participants will be equal to the number of female participants in each culture group. The participants will consist of friends and relatives who are aged between 20 and 45 years old. Participants will be selected on a volunteer basis from the three different cultures under study, European, Iranian, and Arab. The sample size for all the three cultures will be equal hence there will be fifty participants from an Arab culture, fifty from a European culture, and fifty from an Iranian culture. Besides culture and gender, the study is also interested in the effect personality has to the way a person expresses their emotions through crying. To determine the personality of each person, the participants will be expected to take a big five test and these results that will be from this test will be used to understand each participants personality. The participants will take a questionnaire based on how often they cry. The results will then be analysed based on personality, gender and culture. The design of the study will be between subject designs, and the design of the research will include a number of variables. There will be an independent variable in order to influence the responses of the test subjects. The independent variable is crying and the dependent variable will be the three cultures and gender. By the end of the study, I hope to have found evidence to either support or disapprove a hypothesis. I hope to get to get an outcome based on whether there is an interrelationship between culture and personality and how they reflect to individuals of different genders. Hypotheses Hypothesis 1: Women in all cultures cry more than the men. Hypothesis 2: Crying in adults is more common in European culture than in Arab culture and Persian culture Hypothesis 3: Individuals with higher scores on neuroticism cry more often than individuals with lower scores on personality aspect. Hypothesis 4: The adults in the Iranian culture are more likely to cry than the adults in the Arabian culture Hypothesis : There is a close line between gender and culture. References Alexander, M. G., & Wood, W. (2000). 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The influence of ethnicity on the characteristics of multiple sclerosis: A local population study between Persians and Arabs. Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery 115 (2013) 1271–1275. Read More