"It's Official: Men Talk More Than Women"

Common wisdom tells us that women talk more than men. Television comedies often show images of vivacious women chatting away, while their silent husbands quietly nod and mutter, "Yes, Dear." It came as a great surprise to many Americans, then, when the November 2007 news headlines told us "Chatty Cathy? More Like Gabby Gary" (Dube 2007) and "It's Official: Men Talk More than Women" (Keim 2007).

The media were reporting on a recent study that found men talk slightly more than women. However, a close inspection of the study revealed that this difference was very small and that the gender gap in talkativeness varied widely across social situations. The study authors, Campbell Leaper and Melanie M. Ayres, psychologists at University of California–Santa Cruz, acknowledged that "on average, men are slightly more talkative than women. In reality, though, as with most gender differences, the differences are very small."

The psychologists' findings were based on a meta-analysis. Meta-analysis is a systematic review and synthesis of prior published research. Researchers calculate a statistical summary of the findings of prior studies—all of which are exploring a similar research question. The authors reviewed studies on gender differences in communication that were published between 1960 and 2005. They focused on sixty-three studies exploring gender differences in amount of talking, forty-seven studies on the use of affiliative speech, and thirty-nine studies on the use of assertive speech.

The researchers said that their most important finding was the gender gap in how men and women speak, rather than how much they speak. For instance, they found that men tend to use more "assertive speech," such as giving directions, sharing their opinions, and disagreeing with others. Women, by contrast, are more likely to engage in "affiliative" speech, such as giving emotional support, acknowledging others, and agreeing with others. The authors also emphasized the important ways that social context affects social interaction. Men and women would alter both what they said and how much they spoke, depending on who was in their conversation group. Women were more talkative when conversing with children and their college classmates, while men were chattier when talking to their spouses and strangers. When talking to strangers, men often tried to influence the listener, whereas women tried to form a connection with the person. Men also spoke more than women when they were in mixed-gender settings.

class=Text style='line-height:normal'>The study also reveals the importance of social changes in gender role expectations over time. The psychologists found that the gender gap in how men and women communicate has narrowed over time, as more and more men engage in "affiliative" speech. They noted, "It's becoming more acceptable for men to be expressive."

Around the same time that the Leaper and Ayres study hit the news, another study reported in Science found that college-age women speak slightly more than 16,000 words per day, while their male peers speak slightly less than 16,000 words per day—a difference that is not statistically significant. The study, conducted by University of Arizona psychologist Matthias Mehl and colleagues, focused on a sample of 400 college-age students over the time period of 1984 to 2004 (Mehl et al. 2007). The students were outfitted with an electronically activated recorder (EAR), a device that automatically recorded their speech for 30-second periods, every 12.5 minutes, over a 10-day span. Students did not know when the device was recording. The device recorded roughly 4 percent of all the words that each student uttered in a day. Mehl believes that his findings are important because they help to chip away at stereotypes such as "female chatterbox and silent male" and instead highlight the ways that small gender differences are often overblown in the media: "We use our gender magnifying glass and over-generalize from that" (Knox 2008).

Overall, the authors of both studies emphasized the important role that social science can play in erasing stereotypes about gender and language. Leaper said, "These findings compellingly debunk simplistic stereotypes about gender differences in language use....Gender differences appear and disappear, depending on the interaction context" (Leaper and Ayres 2007).