The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology has published a study that suggests women are significantly more talkative than men. The researchers found that the difference in daily words spoken between men and women was mostly small and highly variable across group sizes.
Many people believe that women communicate better than men, as evidenced by various cultural narratives and media sources. A 2007 study of 396 people wearing voice recorders debunked this idea, showing that women and men spoke about 16 thousand words per day more than men, which was previously attributed to heterosexuality.
The researchers expected to receive considerable attention during the 2007 study, but their critics argued that the sample size and lack of diversity were inadequate. In addition, recent research has suggested that talkativeness may vary depending on age and social environment. As a result, they opted to conduct a larger-scale replication to obtain a more comprehensive and generalizable assessment of gender differences in daily word use.
This study follows on from a previous study (Mehl et al., 2007) that found no clear differences in talkativeness in terms of daily spoken words between men and women, but the study’s use of a sample of primarily college-aged adults was criticized, as pointed out by Colin Tidwell, a PhD candidate in clinical psychology at the University of Arizona.
Criticisms emerged during the psychology research debate about how to replicate previous findings through the same methodology, prompting us to initiate an important debate.
The new study used data from 22 different samples collected over 14 years (2005-2019) in four countries: the United States, Switzerland, Serbia, and Australia, among other countries; 2,197 participants were subjected to intermittent recordings using electronically activated recorders (EAR) during their waking hours, enabling the researchers to capture natural speech patterns in real-world contexts without relying on self-reported estimates biased by personal perceptions or social expectations.
The researchers examined different age groups in the study participants, including adolescence (10-17 years), emerging adulthood (18-24 years), early and middle adulthood (25-64 years) and old age (65+ years). They also explored the impact stress has on the ability to carry on a conversation, as some theories propose that women may use talking as a coping mechanism when stressed.
By compiling 631,030 ambient audio recordings and using linguistic analysis software, the researchers recorded the number of words spoken by the participants themselves, followed by the ability to count the words. The researchers also took into account recording duration and other factors to ensure consistent comparisons of data across all participants.
The study demonstrated that women spoke slightly more words per day than men, but the difference was only small, averaging 1,073 words per day. The researchers concluded that the data did not provide enough statistical evidence to determine whether this difference was significant, and that they underestimated the importance of individual interactions.
The study reported that women spoke about 13,349 words per day, while men spoke about 11,950 words per day. This difference is very small and fluctuates across individuals, as Tidwell’s study shows.
By analyzing word use by age group, the researchers observed a significant gender difference. While adolescents and emerging adults spoke fewer words per day, early and middle adults spoke about 3,275 more words per day than men. In comparison, older adults were found to speak about 788 more words per day than women, but this was not statistically significant.
According to the James Cook University report, Tidwell said the stereotype of women being more talkative is likely to be exaggerated and context-dependent, while the difference between early and middle adulthood may be greater.
In addition, the researchers examined the effect of stress on the gender difference. As talkativeness was previously thought to be a coping mechanism for women, they predicted that highly stressed people would have a greater gender difference in talkativeness. However, the study findings did not confirm this theory. The research found that stress did not have a significant effect on either regime of individuals.
The study also examined the actual and perceived use of words as well as the talkativeness of participants, with women reporting greater talkativeness than men, and the data suggests this may not always be accurate.
The study also offered an interesting analysis of whether daily spoken word usage decreased over time. Tidwell noted that initial descriptive analyses estimated the number of words spoken per day to be about 3,000 words less than the original study.