ABSTRACT
All healthy newborns cry, expressing hunger, pain, or other forms of distress. However, when growing up, crying behavior changes in important ways. Does culture affect this development, or do adults in various cultures cry for the same reasons and in the same situations? In other words, can adult crying best be seen as a universal phenomenon, or are there important differences among cultural populations? An early attempt to study cultural differences in crying behavior was reported by Borgquist (1906). He collected descriptions of crying episodes from missionaries and ethnologists in various regions of the world, and found the same crying inducing situations as in the reports of two hundred American colleagues who described their own experiences. However, he also noted cultural differences in the frequency of crying: “Tears are more frequently shed among the lower races of mankind than among civilized people” (p. 180). As evidence, Borgquist mentioned the many references to crying in writings about Latin races, Negroes, Indians, Japanese, Samoans, Sandwich Islanders and Maoris. Further he wrote: “Among civilized races there are [also] wide differences,” and mentioned the English, who according to Darwin, shed tears much less freely than people from the continent. “Racial variations [in crying] are partly due to custom and, in part, to other causes” (p. 155). To Borgquist’s credit it may be added that he emphasized the need for more research before definite conclusions could be reached.
