We’ve all heard the weathered old stereotype that pegs women as the chattier of the two sexes. Last year, Louann Brizendine, neuropsychiatrist and founder of San Francisco’s Women’s Mood and Hormone Clinic, published The Female Brain, a book that claimed it would help explain why:
• A woman uses about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000
• Thoughts about sex enter a woman’s brain once every couple of days but enter a man’s brain about once every minute
• A woman knows what people are feeling, while a man can’t spot an emotion unless somebody cries or threatens bodily harm
The 20,000 words meme picked up some steam after Brizendine’s book hit the shelves (to be fair, the idea didn’t start with Brizendine’s claim; some variation of the “women speak more words than men” stereotype has been repeated for years and years; linguist Mark Liberman has a good compilation of the meme’s permutations here) and such cultural heavyweights as New York Times columnist David Brooks began using the numbers as a foundation for broader claims about sex differences. Unfortunately for Brizendine (and Brooks and anyone else clinging to the notion), the science behind the meme was hard to dig up.
In fact, new research suggests that the stereotype of the chatty woman and the mum man is mostly bunk.
A new study released by Science finds that the gap between the number of words spoken by men and women is practically nonexistent.
James Pennebaker, chair of the University of Texas at Austin’s psychology department, says he was skeptical of the lopsided stats when he saw them quoted in an interview with Brizendine in The New York Times Magazine. “I read that and I knew it couldn’t be true simply because we’ve run too many studies,” he says, “it just didn’t make sense.” In fact, he had been collecting data over the past decade with colleagues at the University of Arizona in Tucson that specifically showed that the sexes are about equal when it comes to a war of words.
Researchers used an electronically activated recorder “that samples 30 seconds of ambient noise (including conversations) every 12.5 minutes; carriers cannot tamper with recordings.”
In most of the samples, the average number of words spoken by men and women were about the same. Men showed a slightly wider variability in words uttered, and boasted both the most economical speaker (roughly 500 words daily) and the most verbose yapping at a whopping 47,000 words a day. But in the end, the sexes came out just about even in the daily averages: women at 16,215 words and men at 15,669. In terms of statistical significance, Pennebaker says, “It’s not even remotely close to different.”
And yet, mark it down: The old stereotype of gabby women and their more stoic male counterparts will persist despite solid science indicating otherwise. For one, that stereotype provides a convenient punchline to the universal anecdotal joke of the henpecked husband and his nagging wife; what husband doesn’t have a story about coming home from work and having to dodge questions about how his day was, all while listening to stories about the mundane details of his wife’s day (haw haw haw)? For two, people eat up this whole battle of the sexes thing. Which sex is “normal”? Which sex is weirder?! It’s a tiresome zero-sum game that needs to be retired.
More on the topic:
Neuroscience in the service of sexual stereotypes
The main job of the girl brain
Female talkativeness: “knowledge protected against induction”?
Sex, Science and Stereotypes
Brizendine Proposes a New Stereotype!
David Brooks, Neuroendocrinologist
Responses to “Chatty Cathys and Silent Bobs? Not so much”
September 12th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Men tend to be choicer about their words when they have hidden agendas. The less said, the more assumptions are made. Leaving the air open to interpretation. A very unique or player style way of saying, “I didn’t say that!” No emotion and no fuss unless the woman brings it up!
September 14th, 2007 at 11:00 am
Generally men don’t have hidden agendas. Leave it to a “girlfriend” to make that claim! It actually isn’t funny that relationships actually end because
A. Men say what they mean and women try like crazy to find the hidden meaning, getting suspicious etc.
B. Women never say what they men and get angry that men don’t get it.
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:15 am
I saw a show on the Discovery Channel about three years ago; it was called something like, “The Science of the Sexes”, but don’t quote me on that.
The show actually had an interesting and believable theory supporting the idea that women speak more than men–it’s a survival technique.
The researchers of this show actually studied the most primitive cultures around today, ones that probably mirror what life was like for all early humans. The story goes that the women of the tribe gather together everyday to exchange stories about how to cook, how to birth and raise children, breastfeeding, treating illnesses, and stories about family and culture. Sounds a little like iDiva, eh?
The men actually needed to speak less because they were in the field hunting most of the day. They relied more on body language, grunts and gestures to communicate.
I don’t actually mind the idea that women speak more words a day than men. In fact, I like thinking of myself as a communicative being who likes to reach out to connect with others like me. Another factor that hasn’t been considered in this research is the advent of technology–I wonder how much the written word counts as spoken word in terms of “word quota” between the sexes. On all the message boards, blogs, and chat groups I’ve been a part of, women make up the large majority of members.
As far as being a nag–yeah, I’ve been known to nag my husband about seeing the doctor about that weird mole he’s worried about, or to stop and ask for directions when we’re clearly lost. But am I not just pushing him to communicate?
And I like to think that I at least nag in a refined, communicative way.