Why Do Women Cry More Easily Than Men?

The Crying Woman (Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels)

JAKARTA - When experiencing sadness, women and men will experience emotional changes and are difficult to control. In fact, not infrequently, this state just makes tears flow.

Even so, men tend to cry less than women when they face touching times. Why is that?

To find out, the following is the reason why women cry more easily than men, summarized from various sources.

Feelings are more dominant

The reason women cry easily is that women use feelings more dominantly than men. This is also proven by Vingerhoets, a clinical psychologist at Tilburg University and author of "Why Only Humans Weep: Unraveling the Mysteries of Tears" through his research cited by "The Cut".

His work shows that women cry 30 to 64 times a year, whereas men only cry 6 to 17 times per year. These results also show that feelings are a contributing factor. The drop in tears is caused by emotional influences.

Shorter tear ducts

In addition, other factors causing women to cry easily because of differences in the biological condition of men. "There have been several studies over the years that have shown that men have larger tear ducts in their eyes, making it less likely that the tears flow down the eyelids to the cheeks," said Dr. Geoffrey.

In fact, in the 1960s, a doctor from the University of Michigan reported the differences in the skulls of men and women by measuring the length and depth of the tear ducts respectively.

The results of the report found that women have shorter and shallower tear ducts than men.

Different hormones

In addition, women also have hormonal differences from men. Where certain hormones can encourage him to cry easier and more often than men. This is also explained by Lauren Bylsma, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh who has studied crying.

He explained that these differences in prolactin levels could help explain differences in crying, as well as other differences in emotional expression and depression susceptibility between men and women.

Meanwhile, research by biochemist William H. Frey analyzed the difference between tears caused by physical and emotional irritation. Emotional tears were found to contain prolactin, a hormone that is found to be 60% higher in adult women than in adult men.

Social standards

Quoting the New York Post page, the last reason why women cry more easily is the existence of social standards in society. By nature, women crying can be seen as more feminine than masculine.

One study suggests that the difference in crying rates between the sexes appears to be greater in countries with greater freedom of expression such as the US or compared to many developing countries.

Besides that, it is a custom where a cry of a man is seen as a sign of weakness, while women do not have a problem when they have to cry. Thus, crying in public can cause men to feel abasement within their peer group. This causes them to cry less often.