Amayzine

This is why women cry more often than men

This definitely applies to me, because I can be quite a crybaby. But a solo crybaby: I don't really cry often in company, but when I'm alone, it takes little to break those dams. Somewhere there's a flood and cats have drowned? Just the thought of it. And yes, I'm the kind of person who cries much faster when something happens to animals than to people. That's also the reason I only watched the movie Hachi once and will never do so again. I seriously needed three days to recover from that. Well, you get it: I cry. Not in moderation.

And then you can say that this is really a woman thing and normally I could react quite fiercely to that, but in this case, it's just true. Women indeed cry more than men. At least, if we are to believe Professor Ad Vingerhoets, and we do, he didn't earn the nickname ‘cry professor’ for nothing. In 2002, he researched the crying behavior of 4000 people from 30 different countries with a colleague.

And what turned out? Worldwide, women cry more than men everywhere. Although there are some differences. In Western countries, the difference is the largest: there, women are clearly the bigger crybabies. In any case, more crying occurs in wealthy countries. According to Vingerhoets, the explanation for this lies in the fact that people there are freer and feel freer to express emotions.

But do we cry more just because we are women? No, fortunately not. We often encounter intense and emotional situations. This can be due to work (more women work in healthcare than men, and in IT, there are more men than women, and in the latter, you don't often deal with emotional things). But part of it can be explained by the difference in hormones. Men are full of testosterone, which actually inhibits tears. On the other hand, we have prolactin, which ensures that you don't have that brake (much).

Okay, and it has also been researched that we often react with tears in certain situations. Because for us, it can be a way to respond to helplessness. Honestly: I really recognize myself in that. If I'm not feeling well, I can already cry when the bus drives away in front of my nose.

Sources: De NFG