Why Does Society View a Man Crying Vs Woman Crying Differently?

It’s a plain fact that society views men and women crying differently. Women are seen as emotional creatures; their tears are not only accepted but also expected in many cases. On the other hand, men are taught to never cry and to never show their tears because they are signs of weakness. A man who cries easily is perceived as weak and even effeminate in certain cases. Needless to say, both perceptions are flawed. However, in order to correct them, we must, first, understand where they stem from. Second, exactly how does a man crying vs woman crying different? Third, are these perceptions healthy or unhealthy? And lastly, what can we do to change them?

Types of Tears: Not All Crying is the Same

To start the discussion, let’s first establish that all tears are not the same. In fact, there are three types of tears.

• Reflex Tears – protect our eyes by removing debris, smoke, dust, and any other foreign object.
• Continuous Tears – keep our eyes lubricated & provide protection against viruses.
• Emotional Tears – that our body produces when we are overwhelmed and overcome by emotions, either positive or negative.

It’s the third kind of tears that are the focus of our discussion. Emotional tears are different from the first two. Where the former is 98% water, the latter contains more proteins and a hormone called prolactin which is produced by the pituitary gland & associated with emotions.

Why Do We Cry?

We all instinctively understand the answer to this question. We cry because it makes us feel better. Crying on bad mental health days is cathartic. This is backed by science. Crying releases oxytocin and endorphins. The former is a feel-good hormone that improves mood, and the latter reduces pain. Therefore, crying can reduce stress, anxiety, pain as well as fear, and nervousness.

Contrarily, holding back tears is unhealthy for our bodies. According to multiple studies, suppressing tears weakens the immune system, causes cardiovascular diseases, and hypertension, and increases the risk of stress, anxiety, and depression.

It is also a sign of helplessness, a way to communicate your feelings to others. Infants cry because they are helpless and rely on tears and sobbing to communicate their needs.

What Happens to Your Body When You Cry?

Crying triggers a cascade of biological responses that most people experience without fully understanding.

When you begin to cry, your autonomic nervous system activates. Your heart rate increases, your breathing changes, and your body prepares to process a strong emotional experience. As the cry continues, your body releases oxytocin and endorphins. Oxytocin is a bonding hormone that promotes feelings of calm and connection. Endorphins are natural pain-relieving compounds that reduce physical and emotional discomfort. Together, these create the “emotional release” sensation that most people describe after a good cry.

Crying also activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which brings the body back toward a resting state after emotional arousal. This is part of why prolonged crying often ends with a feeling of exhaustion followed by calm.

Research published in the journal Motivation and Emotion found that the majority of people who cry report feeling better afterward, though the context matters significantly. Crying alone or in an unsupportive environment is less likely to improve mood than crying in the presence of a trusted person.

When crying is suppressed, the opposite effects occur. Multiple studies have found that chronically suppressing tears is associated with a weakened immune system, elevated cortisol levels, higher rates of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and increased long-term risk of anxiety and depression. The body does not simply absorb unexpressed emotion, it stores it, and the storage comes at a physical cost.

Women Cry Easier Than Men, Fact or Fiction?

According to the works of Adrianus Vingerhoets – a clinal psychologist from Tilburg University who specializes in human tears and crying, women cry more than men. To be exact, women cry 30 to 64 times on average in a year as compared to men who only cry 6 to 17 times per year. Moreover, women tend to cry longer in one sitting than men. Well, that’s one stereotype affirmed, but why do women cry more than men?

How Does a Man Crying Vs Woman Crying Different? 

The answer is multi-dimensional. It has roots in biological, emotional, and societal factors, which are discussed here.

Distinctions in Emotional Responses Between a Man Crying & a Woman Crying

Women are more emotional than men. They are more sensitive and experience a higher neural activity when confronted with emotional situations than men. Sympathy crying is also more common in women and children. This tells us that women are more emotionally mature as compared to their male counterparts. They can express their emotions better and consequently process them better.

Men and women also differ in how they respond to crying or view tears generally. A clinal trial found that women are more likely to help people crying irrespective of gender. Contrarily, men were more likely to only help women cry as compared to men crying. Researchers concluded that for women, crying communicates helplessness as well as a need for connectedness. For men, though, tears only communicate a sense of helplessness.

Whenever a woman cries or sees someone cry, her instinct is to seek comfort and provide comfort, respectively. Comparatively, men approach crying as a problem that needs a solution. That’s why often a man’s instinct is to offer solutions whenever they encounter a person crying.

Why Men Cry From Helplessness More Than Sadness

This is one of the most significant and least-discussed findings in the research on gender and crying. Studies examining the emotional triggers for crying have consistently found that men and women cry in response to different emotional states.

Women are more likely to cry in response to sadness, empathy, and feelings of emotional connection. They report crying when they feel overwhelmed by emotion, when they witness others suffering, or when they feel deeply moved by something beautiful or meaningful.

Men, by contrast, are significantly more likely to cry in response to feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, or frustration when they cannot solve a problem or fix a situation. The sensation of being unable to control or change a difficult situation is a more reliable trigger for male emotional tears than sadness per se.

This difference has important implications for how people support men in emotional distress. Offering comfort and empathy to a crying woman often helps because it addresses the underlying emotional experience. Offering a crying man a concrete path forward, something actionable that addresses the source of helplessness, may be more effective because it targets the actual trigger.

Research also found that men and women respond differently when they encounter someone else crying. Women were more likely to respond with comfort regardless of the gender of the person crying. Men were more likely to respond with comfort when a woman was crying, but more likely to respond with problem-solving or withdrawal when another man was crying. This reflects both societal conditioning and the different emotional meaning men and women attach to tears.

Physiological or Biological Differences Between Men & Women Crying

• Shallow Tear Ducts in women

Male and female bodies are built differently. According to research, physicians measured the length & depth of tear ducts in both male and female skulls. The findings concluded that women have shallower and shorter tear ducts that are quick to fill up and spill over. On the contrary, men have deeper and larger tear ducts that don’t spill over easily. This could be one reason why women cry more than men.

• High Testosterone in men

Furthermore, hormonal differences also play a part in this. Vingerhoets argues that testosterone – the primary hormone in men, inhibits crying. He presents the example of male prostate cancer patients as evidence. These patients experience a dip in their testosterone levels and tend to become more emotional and cry more frequently. Similarly, women experience a rise in testosterone levels during the ovulation phase and report feeling good, their confidence growing, and staying in an overall positive mood. When testosterone levels drop before their period, they become overly emotional and cry often. We can see a correlation between testosterone levels and cry from these examples.

• High Levels of Prolactin in Female Tears

An analysis of male and female tears concluded that female tears contain 60% more prolactin than male tears. This distinction was only present in adult men and women. Before puberty, the chemical makeup of both male and female tears is the same. We can deduce from this that there are certain biological differences that cause men and women to cry differently.

Societal Factors & Gender Stereotypes – Why Can’t Men Cry?

“Boys don’t cry.” Men are conditioned to inhibit emotional expressions from early on. And crying especially is seen as a big sign of weakness in men. Since society frowns upon men crying, they grow up detached from their emotions. Many lack the ability to process and express their emotions in a healthy manner. They lack the ability to be vulnerable. Instead, their repressed emotions come out in bursts of anger and violence, leading to toxic masculinity and toxic communication. Since women process their emotions by crying out, anger and violence are less common to them.

It all stems from gender stereotypes. Society prizes stoicism in men. Even aggression and violence are accepted by them. It is interesting to note that if men cry while still being aligned with masculine stereotypes, it is more easily accepted. For instance, a study explores the prevalence of men crying in competitive sports – a traditionally masculine activity. According to this, it is not only accepted but seen as a sign of emotional depth rather than weakness when sportsmen or politicians cry.

Society gives more room to women to express their emotions and view their tears positively, as opposed to men unless they stick to traditionally masculine stereotypes.

To support this, a study found that in rich countries with more affluent and individualistic societies that allow more freedom of expression, people specifically men cry more often than people in poor & backward countries.

Cultural Differences in Crying Norms Around the World

Crying norms are not universal. They vary significantly across cultures in ways that further confirm the role of socialisation alongside biology.

Vingerhoets and colleagues conducted cross-cultural research on crying across 37 countries and found that people in wealthier, more individualistic, and more gender-equal societies cried more frequently and more openly than those in poorer, more collectivistic, or more patriarchal societies. Men in Northern European countries with strong gender equality policies report crying more often than men in countries where rigid gender roles are maintained.

This finding is significant. It suggests that as societies give men more permission to be emotionally expressive, men are able to cry more in line with their actual biological and emotional experience rather than suppressing to meet a cultural ideal.

In many East Asian cultures, public emotional expression including crying is discouraged for both men and women in formal contexts. In Mediterranean and Latin American cultures, emotional expressiveness including open weeping is more accepted across genders in appropriate contexts. These cultural differences are not reflections of different biology. The biology is the same. They reflect different social permissions.

Emotional Vulnerability and Men’s Mental Health

The connection between emotional suppression and men’s mental health is one of the clearest findings in psychological research. Men who are unable to access and express their emotional lives, including through crying, are at significantly higher risk of mental health difficulties including depression, anxiety, alcohol dependence, and suicide.

Therapeutic approaches that help men develop emotional literacy and permission to express emotion, including crying, are associated with meaningful improvements in mental health outcomes. Talking therapies, men’s support groups, and mindfulness-based approaches all create structured contexts in which emotional expression becomes safe and normalised.

If you or a man in your life is finding it hard to cope with emotions or is experiencing persistent low mood, anxiety, or difficulty managing stress, speaking with a GP or registered therapist is a practical first step. Mental health support for men has developed significantly in recent years, and effective treatments are available.

Is Crying a Sign of Strength or Weakness?

The cultural narrative that crying reflects weakness is directly contradicted by both biology and psychology.

Crying is a regulated, biologically purposeful response to emotional overwhelm. It is the body’s mechanism for processing and releasing intense emotional states. Suppressing it does not make a person stronger, it simply forces the emotional content underground where it continues to affect health, behaviour, and relationships without being processed.

Research has consistently found that people who allow themselves to cry appropriately, in contexts where it is emotionally safe to do so, show better emotional regulation overall, better immune function, and lower rates of depression and anxiety compared to chronic suppressors.

Interestingly, cultural perceptions of crying in men vary significantly by context. A study examining crying in competitive sports found that male athletes who cried after significant wins or losses were perceived not as weak but as emotionally deep and authentic. Politicians and leaders who show tears in moments of genuine grief or compassion are often perceived as more trustworthy and human. The context matters enormously. Tears that emerge from a place of genuine feeling in a culturally accepted context are received very differently from tears that are associated with losing control.

Strategies to Regulate Emotional Crying

For Men:

• Do not suppress your tears. Instead, create a secluded & private space for yourself to cry.
• Actively process your emotions. Name them; accept them and allow yourself to feel them fully.
• Practice breathing exercises and meditation.
• Men need to find healthier ways to express emotions. If crying isn’t an option, find alternative masculine ways to process emotions such as exercising, going to the gym, playing sports, etc.
• Consult a professional therapist who won’t judge you in any way.

For Women:

• Practice mindfulness. 
• Journal your thoughts and emotions to let them out instead of crying.
• Go for a walk to do another activity to distract yourself when crying isn’t appropriate.
• Get a good sleep and wake up feeling better.

Key Takeaways

Men and women cry at different frequencies, in response to different triggers, and under different social permissions. Biology, hormones, anatomy, and decades of social conditioning all contribute to these differences. None of this means that men are emotionless or that women are irrational. It means that human emotional expression is shaped by a complex mix of factors, and that both extremes of the cultural expectation, never crying if you are a man and always crying if you are a woman, are inaccurate and damaging.

Giving men more permission to express emotion, including crying, is not about redefining masculinity away from strength. It is about acknowledging that emotional expression and physical and mental strength are not opposites. The research is clear: people who can process and express their emotions, including through tears, are measurably healthier than those who cannot.