Self-reported crying during the menstrual cycle: Sign of discomfort and emotional turmoilor erroneous beliefs?

Abstract

General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.-Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research -You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain -You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright, please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Crying is generally associated with distress and discomfort and is also part of the premenstrual syndrome in women. Therefore the present studies focused on crying fluctuations during the menstrual cycle. First, a retrospective cross-cultural study among women from 33 different countries (N= 2447) was conducted. Crying proneness reportedly increased before menstruation, with remarkable cross-cultural differences. Women using oral contraceptives (OC) largely reported the same pattern of results as women not using OC. In a second study, 82 Dutch students kept a crying and mood diary for two consecutive menstrual cycles. During no phase of the menstrual cycle, actual crying episodes nor crying proneness was increased, although significant changes in mood were reported. Given the large cross-cultural differences on the one hand, and the remarkable correspondence between the self-reports of those using OC and those who do not use OC on the other hand, it is concluded that the role of female sex hormone fluctuations in crying has to be questioned. Rather, it seems more likely that fluctuations in self-reported crying are based on implicit theories on the relation between menstrual cycle, mood, and crying 3

The Relationship of Gender Roles and Beliefs to Crying in an International Sample

“…From the age of 11, however, differences in crying proneness and frequency begin to emerge (van Tilburg et al, 2002). Of course, contrary to the notion that women might be biologically inclined to be more emotional, research investigating the role of menarche and crying have found no association with menstrual cycles and crying behaviors (van Tilburg et al, 2003; Romans et al, 2017). Furthermore, much of this change appears to stem from a reduction in boys’ expressions of crying, rather than an increase in girls’.…”

Do mood disorders alter crying? a pilot investigation

“…First, this study relied upon self-reports of crying. Although the ACI-S has demonstrated validity and the use of self-reports of crying has been shown to be valid in many contexts, it is also known that retrospective self-reports can be vulnerable to bias due to implicit theories or memory failures [van Tilburg et al, 2003]. Thus, it becomes imperative for future work to use a variety of different measures to index crying in mood disorders, including on-line measures of crying using experience sampling or daily diary methodologies, as well as designs that incorporate observational data and data from other informants.…”

Crying in borderline personality disorder patients

“…A first limitation is that crying was assessed entirely by self-reports. Although the used frequency measures and the Crying Proneness Scale (Denckla et al, 2014) have demonstrated validity, it is also known that retrospective self-reports can be vulnerable to bias due to implicit theories or memory failures (Van Tilburg et al, 2003). Thus, in future research, the current findings need to be crossvalidated with observations and other methodology to assess crying, such as exposing patients and controls to emotional movies (Van der Veen et al, 2012) or using daily diary measures of crying (Bylsma et al, 2011).…”