What do you think, latest research says men talk more than women, overall?

Question

Here's the article titled "Men Talk More Than Women Overall, But Not In All Circumstances": http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071108171518.htm

The article describes a recent set of meta-analyses conducted by Campbell Leaper and Melanie Ayres. These analyses collect all of the available evidence from decades of scientific study and systematically combine the findings into an overall picture of the differences between the genders regarding talkativeness.

The authors found a small but statistically reliable tendency for men to be more talkative than women overall -- especially in certain contexts, such as when they were conversing with their wives or with strangers. Women talked more to their children & to their college classmates.

"These findings compellingly debunk simplistic stereotypes about gender differences in language use," conclude Leaper & Ayres.

The study suggests that social rather than strong biological reasons affect gender differences in language use.

Answer 1

This is an interesting suggestion. However I think Science Daily is trying to exaggerate the sex difference, probably for simple publicity reasons rather than gender politics. At the very start of the original article it says: "statistically significant but negligible average effects sizes were obtained ...men were more talkative (d = –.14) men used more assertive speech (d = .09), whereas women used more affiliative speech (d = .12)" (from abstract).

Note that the Science Daily article doesn't use the word 'negligible', but the original authors do. Anyone who knows about stats will recognise that the Cohen's d values really are small (anything under .2 is considered 'weak'), and are only significant in purely statistical terms i.e. probably represent very tiny differences in reality. If you use large samples - as in a meta-analysis - you can magnify things like differences between men and women on XYZ tests. Its a bit like holding a magnifying glass to an ant and thinking you have discovered a new species of super ant!

Anyone who knows about stats will understand that what I am saying here is pretty reasonable. The Science Daily report looks like a mild case of hype, making the most of a slightly interesting finding, and who can blame anyone for that.

Edit
I didn't read the paper any further (I didn't see it necessary) but if anyone needs anything clarified please ask and I will post an answer when I get a chance.

Answer 2

Do women really talk more?


A bestselling book claims that women say an average of 20,000 words a day and men only 7,000. Can it be true? We wired up two writers to find out

Stephen Moss
Monday November 27, 2006
The Guardian


Photograph: David Levene



The set-up
Talkative women; silent men. The stereotypes permeate our culture. Think of the flighty wives and cranky husbands in Jane Austen. Think, too, of those Coronation Street couples - the Ogdens, the Duckworths - in which the woman is forever chattering while the man is buried in the racing form.

Now the stereotypes have been given scientific substance, of a sort, by a bestselling book in the US, The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California in San Francisco. In her book, Brizendine claims that men and women are different because their brains function differently, and one of the most interesting examples she comes up with is that women talk more - 20,000 words a day compared with 7,000 for the average man - and they talk twice as fast. No wonder Stan Ogden and Jack Duckworth preferred to concentrate on the 3.30 from Uttoxeter: even if they'd had anything to say, they couldn't have got a word in.


Article continues

Brizendine's thesis is attractive. It fits in with our perception that women are more emotionally literate than men and happier to talk about their feelings; that men are more bottled up emotionally. We know it to be true. Brizendine has done us a service by explaining the neuroscience that underpins all this. Or has she?

Women also speak more quickly, devote more brainpower to chit-chat - and actually get a buzz out of hearing their own voices, a new book suggests.

The book - written by a female psychiatrist - says that inherent differences between the male and female brain explain why women are naturally more talkative than men.

In The Female Mind, Dr Luan Brizendine says women devote more brain cells to talking than men.

And, if that wasn't enough, the simple act of talking triggers a flood of brain chemicals which give women a rush similar to that felt by heroin addicts when they get a high.

Dr Brizendine, a self-proclaimed feminist, says the differences can be traced back to the womb, where the sex hormone testosterone moulds the developing male brain.

The areas responsible for communication, emotion and memory are all pared back the unborn baby boy.

The result is that boys - and men - chat less than their female counterparts and struggle to express their emotions to the same extent.

"Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road," said Dr Brizendine, who runs a female "mood and hormone" clinic in San Francisco.

reported widely by national media and have entered the cultural mainstream,” James W. Pennebaker, chair of the Psychology Department and co-author of the study, said. “Although many people believe the stereotypes of females as talkative and males as reticent, there is no large-scale study that systematically has recorded the natural conversations of large groups of people for extended period of time.”

For eight years, the psychology researchers have developed a method for recording natural language using the electronically activated recorder (EAR). The unobtrusive digital voice recorder tracks people’s interactions, including their conversations.

The researchers analyzed the transcripts of almost 400 university students in the United States and Mexico whose daily interactions were recorded between 1998 and 2004. The research participants could not control the EAR, which automatically records for 30 seconds every 12.5 minutes, and did not know when the device was on.

Answer 3

I would have to read the original article to have a strong opinion. I don't see anything difficult to believe from the Science Daily link but I would look carefully at meta-analytical studies from social or psychological research because their conclusions can be very volatile with what look like small changes in methodology. For example I would want to know how they deal with the risk of compounding data corruption in aggregating a data set and how does their meta-analysis demonstrate their result as significant.

But again I don't see any reason to not believe the findings. It is really not suprising that men talk more in some contexts and talk more in general because they dominate more types of social situations.

Answer 4

Interesting piece of research and article thank you.

That's a curious surprise, I always thought of women as being more verbal. It would be interesting to see just what kind of breakdowns between different contexts have been identified beyond the couple of instances the article raises.

No problems believing the research, the issue has no emotional loading for me at all.

Answer 5

As gals we expect me to be confident and strong to "approach" us. He then must be able to carry a good conversation or be funny in order to keep our attention. The question is is he "listening"?

Answer 6

Statistics lie. They can be used to tell you whatever you want them to tell you. The only way men talk more is when they are made to talk, such as giving a speech or having to speak to others at social gatherings (called networking). Women choose to speak more often, doing so of their own accord. If men weren't placed in the position of having to speak, then they would speak less often.

Answer 7

i wonder about a lot of the "research" they've discovered in the past...women are more verbal...men are more visual...men are hardwired for this or that. sometimes i think they're just trying to confirm their own beliefs!

Answer 8

No and I am a girl so I think I should know... but maybe boys do talk more but I don't think so at all....but I don't want to lie on here so I will just say what I think...NO

Answer 9

I think men really ought to reconsider some of their useless stereotypes, that's what I think.

Answer 10

I agree . My husband and my cell phone(s) bill shows it. I didn't need a study to prove that.