@mm25075,
mm25075 wrote:
Please won't someone tell me what their definition of "a lot" is? It's spelled A L O T. How many minutes a day is that? It's a perfectly valid question! I mean seriously!
If I had to quantify it, I would say the average number of words required by the average woman to answer a "yes" or "no" question divided by the average number of words a man would use to answer the same question. That could be the wordiness ratio. I wonder if we could calculate a written version by examining the responses to a simple post on A2K.
@engineer,
*gasp*
Setanta is a woman! A giant, bearded woman!
New facts supplied by a trusted source:
Men speak on average 7000 words per day.
Women speak on average 22000 words per day!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-419040/Women-talk-times-men-says-study.html
I rest my case.
@Ceili,
I just looked at the "damn cats" thread and I couldn't see a big difference. Written responses are probably different that spoken ones, but that's a data point.
Engineer wrote:I wonder if we could calculate a written version by examining the responses to a simple post on A2K.
Not now, but in the old site we could.
Robert will change the search engine, eventually..
I don't think that the women on here have denied talking too much .
Actually I should say that women are excellent conversationalists while men
are more sparingly with words. It's a genetic defect most men have, that's all!
@sozobe,
You know . . . i'd resent the insult implicit in this post, if it weren't so damned funny . . .
Good Lord, I can't take it any more...
The real reason we talk, a lot. Is because of internal pressure, hot air. We'd all blow up otherwise. Satisfied??
Here's a conversation I remember having with my husband:
Jim White had his baby today.
Oh, what was it, boy or girl?
I donno.
What did they name it?
I donno
What hospital? How much did it weigh? how long was it? Was she in labor long? Who was there in the delivery room? Is mom OK? when are they coming home? Who's her OB?
I donno. They just said Jim White had his baby today.
Augggh!
@Cyracuz,
It sounds like a crappy party. All it takes is one person.
@Setanta,
Setanta wrote:
You know . . . i'd resent the insult implicit in this post, if it weren't so damned funny . . .
I thought it was really funny, too, and she's totally right on
We have a tennis court and hold a Friday morning social game-- it mainly consists between 5 to 15 woman, I being the lone male. Morning tea break conversation's amaze me -- At any one time there can be more than two girls conversing at the same time, yet they all seem to be able to listen to every conversation and make comments or reply to them at any time, also when one finishes a conservation another will take it up instantly-- I, of course, never am able to butt in and can only follow one talker at a time.
@Cyracuz,
Cyracuz wrote:
Why o why?
When we were hunters, it's not very smart to jibber jabber all the time, to scare away the prey, or reveal uself to an enemy, which is why most men can STFU for longer period of time than women.
This was a good thread, glad to see it again.
Having just reread the thread, I suddenly remember a certain friend that traveled to visit me in my last home town. I'll call him Bob, because that's his name. Bob is a master talker in terms of words per minute and identifiable logical points made/time ratio. Bob and I and my business partner (I'll call her Sheila, not her name) were walking down the street to go get some lunch, me in the middle as we advanced along the sidewalk. Both of them were talking a mile a minute; I remember thinking Bob was rude, as Sheila had been speaking first. Motormouth, I said to myself.
Well, hours later, Bob started remarking on what Sheila's points of view were, as expressed in that short amount of time. (Subject matter changed, so I could pinpoint the timing.)
I was amazed. He actually listened and digested information from another as he was talking full speed. It's a kind of genius...
Somebody researched this once. It was discovered that men actually talk more.
And Setanta is in fact a giant bearded woman.
@Arjuna,
Well, according to the research I've seen, on average women use seven times more words in a day than men.
But I do think that despite this, men probably exchange more information on average per day than women.
@Cyracuz,
The one I saw was examining conversations between men and women from the angle of time spent talking, not the number of words.
The number of words used would reflect what? A soldier who'd been stationed in Guam told me that the Guam language is unusually long-winded.
http://www.livescience.com/health/071129-most-talkative.html
Quote:Women may have a reputation as the chattier gender, but research into the matter shows that men may actually be a little more talkative than women—though it all depends on the situation.
Psychologist Campbell Leaper of the University of California Santa Cruz conducted a review of research into the topic spanning from the 1960s to today and which is detailed in the November issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review. The studies Leaper examined looked at talkativeness and different types of speech under a range of social situations and comparing mixed-gender and same-gender conversations.
One clear point that emerged from all the studies was that the type of activity people were engaged in influenced how much they talked.
"So even though on the average we're finding a slight trend toward men being more talkative than women, we found larger differences when you looked at particular situations," Leaper said.
During decision-making tasks, men were more talkative than women, the studies showed, but when talking about themselves or working with children, women were more talkative than men.
Leaper said that these gender differences could have to do with differences in gender socialization; typically, women are socialized to be more comfortable talking about their feelings, while men are socialized to be dominant and take charge.
"One gender isn't inherently more talkative than the other, it's just that a lot of times it depends on the situation and gender role influences," Leaper said.
A recent study in the journal Science that recorded conversations of university students supports Leaper's idea, finding that on average, men and women used about the same number of words per day. (Leaper said that studies that used this measure of talkativeness tended to find less difference between men and women than studies that looked at how much time people spent talking. In these latter studies, men used up more time in the conversation than women, Leaper said.)
Talkativeness was also influenced by whether a person was talking to someone of their same gender or the opposite gender.
"Men tend to be more talkative than women, but particularly when they're interacting in mixed-gender settings," Leaper said, explaining that this could also be a result of men traditionally being socialized to dominate.
The situation was reversed when looking at different types of speech, specifically assertive (used to achieve dominance and goals) and affiliative (used to connect to others): differences emerged in how much these types of speech were used when comparing two men talking to each other to two women conversing than when a man and a woman were talking.
These differences have actually declined with time though.
"In terms of styles of communication, gender differences are decreasing," Leaper said. "My interpretation is that it reflects the historical changes in gender roles," with women coming into the workplace more and men being more open about their feelings.
Turned up on a quick google, don't know how good the quality of the research is.
