Understanding the Association of Crying Proneness with Empathy and Histrionic Personality among Adults

Abstract

Crying is one of the common emotions displayed in several contexts, ranging from emotional situations to distress. It is often correlated with empathy as well as with theatrical and manipulative behaviour, which is a characteristic of individuals with a histrionic personality. This study examines age and gender differences in crying proneness, histrionic personality, and empathy among adults in India. The sample consisted of the age group 18–60 (N = 100) through purposive sampling. The Crying Proneness Scale (CPS) by Denckla et al. (2014), the Brief Histrionic Personality Scale (BHPS) by Ferguson & Negy (2014), and the Perth Empathy Scale (PES) by Brett et al. (2022) have been administered to measure crying proneness, histrionic personality, and empathy, respectively. A cross-sectional design was used, and the data were analysed using the t-independent test and Pearson’s correlation coefficient. The findings indicated non-significant gender differences in crying proneness and empathy, whereas males scored higher in histrionic personality. The findings indicated significant age differences where younger adults have scored higher on histrionism and older adults have scored higher in empathy, whereas insignificant differences are reported in crying proneness. Crying proneness has a significant correlation with empathy. No significant correlation was found between histrionism and crying proneness, as well as empathy.