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March 7, 2008

Strange But True!

Q. Why are women such big talkers? Or are they?

A. You'd certainly think so based on media reports putting them at 20,000 words per day versus only 7,000 for men, even though not a single study has systematically recorded the natural conversations of large groups of people, say Matthias Mehl and colleagues in “Science” magazine. A British study estimated the numbers at 8,800 versus 6,100, though its authors admitted a possible flaw in that participants could manually turn off their recorders whenever they chose to. Then Mehl introduced electronically activated recorders that track real-world minute-to-minute interactions, turning on every 12.5 minutes for 30-second talk samples. And here, averaged over six groups of university students — five U.S and one Mexico — the women spoke about 16,200 words per day, the men 15,700, which is not a statistically significant difference. In other words, both average about 16,000 words per day, though with very large individual differences. “Thus we conclude on the basis of available empirical evidence that the widespread and highly publicized stereotype about female talkativeness is unfounded.”


 
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