Weeping by Adults: Personality Correlates and Sex Differences

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Abstract
In a comparison of 70 adult men and 70 adult women, all British, the women claimed to weep more often and with more intensity in all the situations or emotional states that were reviewed. Nevertheless, the pattern of susceptibility to different precipitants recorded for the men was similar to that for the women. Scores on a derived index of overall weeping reactivity, based upon 16 precipitants, were associated with sex, the extent of identification with feminine and rejection of masculine sex-role stereotypes, and levels of emotional empathy and neuroticism. Some subjects could remember an age when their childhood levels of weeping had declined; the median of 11 years of age recalled by the men was significantly younger than the median of 16 years recalled by the women.