The popular stereotype of the garrulous female and the man of few words, is so pervasive that even many women believe it. The image of giddy teenage airheads to gossipy middle aged women on the phone and in coffee shops, talking nineteen to the dozen is perpetuated by movies, books and mostly by misogynistic jokes. Apparently, the word "trivia" derives from the practice of women of ancient Rome gathering at the intersection of three streets at the end of the market day to exchange lengthy and "useless" information.
I have a son and a daughter. I have watched both of them in the company of their friends. I myself attended an all girls’ school but spent my years as an educator teaching teenage boys. I have seen my mother with her friends and my father in all male gab sessions. I myself talk a lot and although my husband can fool strangers into believing that he is the taciturn type, I have seen him in conversations with people he knows well. So I have had the opportunity to watch both sexes at their chatty best or worst. Consequently, I have never bought into the myth that women are the yakkier gender.
The same erroneous "facts" about women talking more than men are repeated in this recent report – it is probably one of many such spurious studies.
It is something one half of the population has long suspected – and the other half always vocally denied. Women really do talk more than men. In fact, women talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman chalking up 20,000 words in a day – 13,000 more than the average man.
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… ( there is a lot more B.S. in this study about both women and men.)
What? Talking gives women a rush similar to heroin? Oh, come on !!!! Don’t believe a word of it – I never did. Now here is a new study which supports what I have always suspected to be true but never did see an official corroboration of it, until now.
WASHINGTON – Another stereotype — chatty gals and taciturn guys — bites the dust. Turns out, when you actually count the words, there isn’t much difference between the sexes when it comes to talking.
A team led by Matthias R. Mehl, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, came up with the finding, which is published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.
The researchers placed microphones on 396 college students for periods ranging from two to 10 days, sampled their conversations and calculated how many words they used in the course of a day.
The score: Women, 16,215. Men, 15,669. The difference: 546 words: "Not statistically significant," say the researchers.
"What’s a 500-word difference, compared with the 45,000-word difference between the most and the least talkative persons" in the study, said Mehl.
Co-author James W. Pennebaker, chairman of the psychology department at the University of Texas, said the researchers collected the recordings as part of a larger project to understand how people are affected when they talk about emotional experiences.
They were surprised when a magazine article asserted that women use an average of 20,000 words per day compared with 7,000 for men. If there had been that big a difference, he thought, they should have noticed it.
They found that the 20,000-7,000 figures have been used in popular books and magazines for years. But they couldn’t find any research supporting them.
"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 periods of time," Pennebaker said.
Indeed, Mehl said, one study they found, done in workplaces, showed men talking more.
Still, the idea that women use nearly three times as many words a day as men has taken on the status of an "urban legend," he said.
Here is what I DO know from my own "unscientific" but attentive observations over the years.
- There is no difference in how much men or women talk as a group – individuals differ. There are just as many motor mouths as there are laconic members of either gender.
- Both groups tend to talk more in a setting where the majority belongs to their own gender.
- In public (class rooms, offices, town halls, political rallies) where the distribution of the sexes is more or less equal, men talk more.
- Women are more willing to strike up conversations with total strangers, especially if the other party is also female. Men tend not to engage strangers in a conversation. If they do, they too are more comfortable talking to an unfamiliar woman than to a strange man.
- Women, even if they are talky, usually listen better – they have a better recall of what others say in noisy, crowded gatherings. Garrulous males get more easily carried away by the resonance of their own voice and the pearls of their supposed wisdom (compare speeches by male and female politicians). They pay less attention to what others have to say … unless the "other" is their boss.
Accidental Blogger 
11 responses to “I Knew It All Along!”
Ruchira,
Your observations are rock solid, as far as I’m concerned. When I was gabbing with a total stranger, a male, the other day, recounting my manifold achievements and relieving him of the burden of his own defective opinions, I… Just kidding.
But see the NYT story on this development. The byline’s male, so it’s brief.
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The NYT story is predictably cute. All the males I have emailed the story to so far, have replied with similar humorous attempts at brevity ! But I do agree with the joke at the end – a constant source of irritation between me and my husband. His complaint? “Why are you shouting?” My exasperated reply? “Because you didn’t hear me the last three times I said it in a normal voice!”
Now here is a way for women to say less and men to listen better – it was emailed to me by a friend when the insanity over Apple’s iPhone was in the news:
Apple Computer announced today that it has developed a computer chip that can store and play high fidelity music in women’s breast implants. The iTit will cost between $499.00 and $699.00 depending on speaker size.
This is considered to be a major breakthrough because women have always complained about men staring at their breasts and not listening to them.
Sujatha suggested that it would be even more useful if the music was interspersed with messages such as “Don’t forget to take out the trash!”
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I maintain that my wife mumbles. I can hear her mumbling, so obviously the problem is not my hearing deficiency.
Sujatha’s suggestion should work independent of cutting edge prosthetic technologies. Recall the “backmasking” scandals of the ’80s? Or, for that matter, the subliminal advertising hoopla of a couple decades earlier?
Maybe this explains why every time I play one particular recording of Beethoven’s Op. 132 string quartet, I have an irresistible urge to do the dishes.
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There are times when I wish my younger one wouldn’t gab so much- she can talk the ears off anyone who is willing to listen. But then I look at myself and how I turned out as an adult, as opposed to being a very garrulous kid – I’m always accused of being too taciturn now!. I suppose that over a lifetime, the total number of words uttered by people of either sex would even out, which is borne out by this new study, since it tracked the total words spoken over longer periods of time than just a couple of hours with volunteers. Though, who knows what the results would have been if they had chosen a high school classroom, or a retirement home?
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Me taciturn saw chatty as “more happening up above”. T’is a sorry day for women, being rudely dragged down from their high pedestal and all.
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I attended all girls’ schools until I was eleven, when I started 7th grade among 12 and 13 year olds in a new school in a new part of the U.S. I remember the newfound presence of boys in the class as less memorable than the behavior of other girls. Noticeably, they contributed less in class discussions: both less than the boys, and less as individuals than girls had in my previous, all girls, schools. There was palpable pressure not to talk too much, mostly, in my memory, enforced by other girls. Girls who raised their hands to the same degree as boys were known as too talkative, a description which had overtones of oddly masculine. Mind you, this was 1987, not 1957. I don’t know if these class dynamics were an adolescent development, or a continuation of those in elementary school. They did, however, bring me to the early conclusion that differences in the amount that women and men, as generalized categories, talk are solidly nurture, not nature. Since my entire family, male, female, cat, is very vocal, it took me longer to arrive at the realization that there’s no particular valence between assertiveness in talking, and actually having something to say. My ostensibly taciturn (but talky– and write-y– as all get out, if drawn out, privately, on a subject of interest) better half helped teach me that.
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Namit,
Most women will be happy and relieved to see this particular pedestal crumble. Unlike your generous interpretation, it usually means “not much happening up above” while the “silent” male is supposed to exude the aura of deep thought. (Although one of the studies (the suspect one) indicates that they are thinking of sex “every 52 seconds” :-)
Anna:
The phenomenon you point to, of confident and “vocal” girl children going “silent” in the presence of boys is very common and at some level, quite sad. It happens in every culture and for the most part, persists into early adulthood. I have noticed that most women fully overcome their reticence in public settings later in life – in their thirties and forties. The older the woman, less the fear of expressing their opinions.
Since my entire family, male, female, cat, is very vocal, it took me longer to arrive at the realization that there’s no particular valence between assertiveness in talking, and actually having something to say. My ostensibly taciturn (but talky– and write-y– as all get out, if drawn out, privately, on a subject of interest) better half helped teach me that.
That’s funny. My own situation and learning curve was almost identical, including the “ostensibly” taciturn “better half.” (In our home, my mother was the “quiet” one) But the funny thing is that after more than three decades of marriage and five years of dating prior to that, my husband is much more garrulous in middle age and I more taciturn! They always say that long married couples pick up each others characteristics. The only person in whose company I revert to my old gabby self, is my sister.
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Talking I think is also therapy, much needed for the stresses imposed on women by patriarchy. It is also a strategy to evade/escape/as well as confront oppression. I do think that women talk much more but isn’t there enough cause for them to do so?
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I never believed it, either. Especially as it contradicts the other studies telling us that boys talk more in school and at work (which jives with my own experience), where we spend half our time. Probably there is a difference in the content and style of male and female talk, which would be largely (though not entirely) determined by culture and environment. But a difference in the amount of talk? How can anyone believe it?
The real stunner in this article was that an average person speaks about 16K words a day, and yet there can be a 45K difference between the most and least garrulous. Yikes!
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Ruchira
Interesting a read,though the same old wine or known fundamentals are packaged in a rejuvenated packaging :)
I will come back to this post again…but at this point, I would like to highlight what British Telecom tried through its path-breaking advertising campaign
The brand identified that middle aged men appeared to spend below average time on the phone. Therefore, increasing frequency and extending call lengths among this group became a core marketing objective….
a perfect campaign had been arrived at
“To make men better conversationalists”
:)
women are made of different molecules within a distinct DNA structure as compared to that of men…n we women are also profoundly driven by the need to enable, enrich n sustain relationships, while men are more objective by tendency…
I will comment on this when I am at home…till then
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Session-II
I tend to subscribe to the second study that you’d mentioned here
If we remove the sex as the differentiating factor
-Garrulous or highly talkative (it’s almost like a flurry of thoughts rushing past)
-Measured or Grounded talker
-Comfort seeking talker (he or she in his or her cocoon of friends n loved ones)
-Socialite or Page 3 talker
-Introspective yet Scandulous talker
-Extrovert yet Fumbling talker
-Taciturn
-Silence Sanyasi……
such many combinations (psychographic and situations based) do exist around us as well as we see ourselves in a few hues
I tend to agree with this observation -in workplaces, showed men talking more….most times, in the meetings and presentations, men are verbose,heavy, sleep-inducing, Marathoners and do many laps before they breast past the line!
and if we observe how technology (hand-held I am hinting at especially in India) is influencing, one could see more men talking over their respective mobile phones than women in the streets…well, of course, we need to insert the fact that the ownership of mobiles amongst women is relatively lesser! still..men chat longer and they claim that they hate it but they indulge in messaging too!
Garrulous males get more easily carried away by the resonance of their own voice ….absoloutely! what a neat scotch kind of observation!
men float on their conversations like those explorers who just found some land n running berserk here n there to celebrate the discovery of a patch of land that appears to have some spicy plants…!
I feel, it’s time to kill all these cliches n explore the same universe “Communication or social interactions” in a different way..
it would be interesting to observe how a man handles solitude or being lonely Vs in a group scenario (same sex or opposite sex)…similarly a woman!I did come across a but – men when they are all alone, they tend to seek support from technology 0 could be their mobiles, or other handheld devices or laptop etc etc….
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