Social and personality correlates of crying relevant to clinical application were examined in the laboratory. The effects of gender and of gender-pairing on emo tional expression of film-induced sadness were evaluated. College students served in pairs as experimental subjects. Results indicated that men retrospectively report ed less crying than women, and that both male and female subjects reported more appropriate sex-stereotypic behavior (i.e., males cried less, females cried more) when in opposite-sex pairings. Correlational analyses indicated that females, un like males, showed clear concordances between sadness and crying. Males, unlike females, evidenced negative correlations between reported anger and crying. Per sonality variables (including empathy, extraversion, femininity, ego strength, and prior levels of stress) were found to be associated with crying and sadness, al though markedly different correlation patterns were seen for men and women. The findings collectively suggest that crying is associated with a complex interaction among gender, personality, and context variables.Because crying has become increasingly recognized as serving an adaptive function of stress relief, research on the factors related to the disinhibition of crying should provide valuable information for clinical application of cathartic techniques, particularly for individuals prone to suppression of such affect.

Our study investigates the nature of elevated depression scores on the MMPI-168 in human-immunodeficiency-virus- (HIV-)infected individuals. Comparison of MMPI scales, factor scores, and individual depression item endorsement rates were made between three groups of homosexual/bisexual men: asymptomatic HIV-1 seropositives (n = 156), symptomatic HIV-1 seropositives (n = 156), and a comparison group of HIV-1 seronegatives (n = 117). Elevated scores were found on the MMPI depression scale for all three groups, with HIV infection and the presence of symptoms being associated with significant elevations in depression. Analyses of these elevated scores through the use of factor scores and individual item analyses strongly suggest that endorsement of items related to physical symptoms and neuropsychological complaints accounted for much of the difference in overall depression scores between samples. Implications are discussed for measurement and diagnosis of depression in HIV populations.

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Welsh codes of Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-168 (MMPI-168) profiles were calculated for 151 HIV-1 seropositive gay men and 27 gay seronegative controls. Although 99% of seropositives' profiles were clinically elevated, the profile configurations among subjects were varied. These data document the presence of considerable emotional distress among HIV-infected individuals, yet the heterogeneity of codes encountered argues against generalizations of seropositive subjects based upon mean MMPI profiles.

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