Why are "soft-spoken" people often perceived to be unintelligent?

Answer 1

because in this day and age of "reality" TV, violent movies, instant messages, instant news, and instant food... we are conditioned to respond to the "over the top" personality, the loud, self-confidant, braggadocio's... People who are too polite or well mannered to yell, or name-call, refer to others as etc, are seen as boring, un-inspiring, lacking in vital doses of personality, and yes, even unintelligent.... What do you expect from a generation raised to rely on appearance rather than content?

Answer 2

Soft Spoken people are definitely not perceived to be Unintelligent. What gave u that impression?
Infact theres an old saying " Speech is Silver , Silence is Golden"

Answer 3

I have to agree, never perceived a soft spoken person to be unintelligent. Although you are probobly soft spoken and I can tell from your use of the word "unintelligent" that you are smart enough to not use the words dumb/stupid/ignorant(which means uninformed, not low Iq). So, I'd say you're intelligent to a point.

Answer 4

Reason 1#: 90% of our communication is non-verbal. Therefore the expressions you use when talking matters alot. And I emphasize again they matter A LOT.


Reason2#: People use anger to manipulate those who are physicologically and physically weaker than they are. This makes them look "stronger" to the rest of the physicologically weaker people. Therefore, the "hard-spoken" people are percieved to be intelligent.


Reason 3#: I don't know about your culture, but over here we have a culture that is so waiting for a knight in shining armour, or heroic figure to come and tell them what to do. The "soft-spoken" people are not the usual knights-in-shining-armour.


I can go on and on, but I'm thinking that you got my point. We are still uncivilized. The age of Reason is yet to dawn upon mankind.

Answer 5

I have never seen this happen. Unintelligent people are percieved as such. In fact people who talk loudly and often make themselves look silly at times with their mindless babble. Soft spoken (the saying-walk softly but carry a big stick-comes to mind) peoples words are often more valued because they are more thought out. Less random, spontaneous, impulsive....

Answer 6

I don't agree with that. I believe soft spoken people are more intelligent. The less you talk, the more you listen, the more you learn. The more loud people open their mouth, the more they show off all that they don't know. And usually they'd rather hear themselves talk than find an answer. Most wise people I know are soft spoken. Don't change. :o)

Answer 7

Perception if often very strange, but powerful nonetheless. In many instances, when a person doesn't speak up, their silence might not be perceived as "soft-spokeness" but the inability to come up with an intelligent comment.

Answer 8

I've never heard of that. Soft spoken people ARE often the intelligent ones.

Answer 9

I percieve that you are percieving that "soft-spoken" people are unintelligent.
It is more a matter of insecurity I believe, than any lack of
intelligence. You never know.
Like all them old men in them bars say. With them knots on
thier heads and all thier teeth gone. "Leave them quiet guys
alone!"

Answer 10

OK, first off - DON'T STEREOTYPE - a lot of "out-spoken" people are not intelligent at all - so - the only way they precieve you as unintelligent - is if you are never confident in yourself and you actually say something stupid