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Phoenix, AZ, USA. Throughout recorded history there has been a perception that women talk more than men - and they use many more words when doing so. Major publications, broadcast media and popular entertainment all promote this notion.
Dr Louann Brizendine wrote in The Female Brain that "a woman uses about 20,000 words a day, while a man uses only about 7,000" of them. Such assertions have propelled the financing of many a marriage counselor.
However, new research poses a limited challenge to all that.
Matthias R. Mehl, an assistant professor of psychology (University of Arizona), and other researchers set out to challenge the findings in a series of studies. The group recorded the conversations of nearly 400 U.S. and Mexican male and female university students over a six year period.
To measure the chit-chat, they developed something called an Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR). An unobtrusive digital device, it logged the daily conversations of those who wore the device.
The results are reported in the journal Science (6 July 2007). Women spoke a daily average of 16,215 words during their waking hours, versus an average of 15,669 words for men. So, the women in the study barely won the gabfest, but not by a statistically significant margin.
Prof. Mehl also noted that there are "very large individual differences around this mean."
"What's a 500-word difference, compared to the 45,000-word difference between the most and the least talkative persons? Just to illustrate the magnitude of difference, among the three most talkative males in the study, one used 47,000 words. The least talkative male spoke just a little more than 500," Mehl said.
Man: Study here says women talk twice as much as men.
Woman: Of course we do. We have to repeat everything we say.
Man: What?
Mehl confessed to a concern about the homogeneity of the sample. The subjects were college students. However, he claims the study shows no support for the idea that women have larger lexical budgets than men, any more than it did that gender differences in daily word use have a basis in evolution.
Despite the study's limitations, the authors claim that "the widespread and highly publicized stereotype about female talkativeness and male reticence is unfounded."
Maybe so, but Media Ranger wonders about the "very large individual differences" around the mean. And how socialized were the men and women in the sample? Did they routinely interact with the opposite sex? And how about same-sex communiction? And what happens as the populations ages? And why can't you tell me what you feel?
And ... well, you know, there is a lot more to say about this.
Are Women Really More Talkative Than Men? Matthias R. Mehl, Simine Vazire, Nairán Ramírez-Esparza, Richard B. Slatcher, James W. Pennebake. Science 6 July 2007: Vol. 317. no. 5834, p. 82. DOI: 10.1126/science.1139940.
Media Ranger is a highly irregular columnist for the TS-Si website, speaking with an independent voice on a variety of topics. The Media Ranger's signed articles do not necessarily convey an official position of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates.
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Matthias R. Mehl
Media Ranger
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