Age, gender, geographical region, belonging to the host country, religious fractionalization, & stereotypic gender roles (proxied by labor force participation rate of women in the athlete’s country) are prominent predictors of crying in the Olympics

Golden tears: A cross-country study of crying in the Olympics. Alex Krumer, Andrew Musau. January 2022. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358233754_Golden_tears_A_cross-country_study_of_crying_in_the_Olympics

Description: Previous psychological studies on emotional crying have overwhelmingly relied on self-reported data from individuals’ recollections of their own experiences. Apart from the bias that arises from faulty recollection, there is no incentive for an individual to truthfully reveal his or her own experiences in such surveys. In this paper, we address the methodological limitations associated with self-reporting and non-sufficient emotional elicitors, by exploring data on gold medalists of all 450 individual events at the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympic Games at the end of the medalists’ respective competitions and during the medal ceremonies. We find that age, gender, geographical region, belonging to the host country, religious fractionalization, and stereotypic gender roles (proxied by labor force participation rate of women in the athlete’s home country) are likely to be prominent predictors of crying. Thus, our results suggest that emotional crying is not only a biological feature, but also a cultural phenomenon.