New at Reason
Steve Chapman digresses on what makes a man a man.
Comments to "New at Reason":
BTS | July 9, 2007, 7:37am | #
Mhmmjfn | July 9, 2007, 8:05am | #
Hmm.Robert Streitfield | July 9, 2007, 8:46am | #
Study didn't come from general population. Male college students are not the average man. Therefore, premise is flawed.I would bet that, even if they are equal on average, there is more variability in the men's numbers.
| July 9, 2007, 8:58am | #
...If the study was done during football season, I can maybe see 16,000 words a day.
Reinmoose | July 9, 2007, 9:14am | #
Robert Streitfield -agreed. Observe people in an environment where they're encouraged to talk constantly. Real objective...
Mcgcruiser | July 9, 2007, 9:19am | #
Have any of you actually listened to a male college student these days? They sound like Valley Girls, dropping the word "like" in every sentence, rising intonation at the end of each sentence. Doesn't surprise me they talk as much as girls.Aresen | July 9, 2007, 9:20am | #
Sorry, Steve, but you're citing anecdote - and not even one where the words have been actually counted. [Maybe the meetings are longer because the guys are talking longer to impress the women?]My experience is the opposite - it is the guys who drag out the meetings at work because they have to rehash the same points over and over and over and over.
barris | July 9, 2007, 9:36am | #
Steve, I think the daily breakdown goes something like this:15,000 words: sports
1,000 words: everything else
Trent Feinstein | July 9, 2007, 9:40am | #
So I can throw away my newest incarnation of the Fairness Doctrine?BTS | July 9, 2007, 9:46am | #
*hat tip* to Warty. No one remembers Orgazmo!DADIODADDY | July 9, 2007, 9:50am | #
.Jeffrey Lebowski | July 9, 2007, 9:58am | #
Is it. . . is it, being prepared to do the right thing? Whatever the price? Isn't that what makes a man?Ken Shultz | July 9, 2007, 10:22am | #
I'm not saying I agree with the study--it's got me scratchin' my head too. ...but there may be something else at work.Maybe it seems like women talk more because of the way they talk. I've always assumed women just talked more, but I've also assumed that they ask more questions. If somebody's taking the initiative all the time, trying to get you to talk, it might seem like she's talking more than she really is.
"...outfitted 396 students with portable digital recorders to capture their conversations. To make a long story short, the study found women and men both utter about 16,000 words a day."
I haven't read the study, so I don't know what it says. ...but this would only seem to suggest that college age boys chatter away like women.
In their defense, you know they tend to live with numerous roommates and eat communally. They also tend to have more occasion to speak with more women, which may be influencing the results.
Ken Shultz | July 9, 2007, 10:26am | #
Also, according to a recent report I saw on O'Reilly, there are hundreds of Gay Rape Gangs running around on campuses these days. Were they accounted for in the study?...'cause that could have skewed the results.
Alan Vanneman | July 9, 2007, 10:34am | #
Want some male verbiage? Listen to talk radio, particularly "sports chat." Listening to guys talk sports is like listening to chicks talk fashion or, even worse, kitchen cabinets.I'm hooked on posting here at H&R because I don't have to talk. I can spew my madness without interacting with a single human being. Except you all, of course.
Aresen | July 9, 2007, 11:08am | #
I can spew my madness without interacting with a single human being. Except you all, of course.Don't throw that word "human" around so lightly, some of us might be offended.
wayne | July 9, 2007, 11:10am | #
"I can spew my madness without interacting with a single human being. Except you all, of course."Actually, we are all 'bots workin' for the man at Reason. Hail Reason!
I do wonder why people bother doing studies anymore - people don't seem to be swayed by them at all, dismissing them if they don't agree with their previously formed opinion.
Reinmoose | July 9, 2007, 11:28am | #
I do wonder why people bother doing studies anymore - people don't seem to be swayed by them at all, dismissing them if they don't agree with their previously formed opinion.or...
it could be that studies can only draw conclusions about the population from which the sample is drawn. Maybe people are getting smarter, and rather than taking studies at face value,
(think -
grandmother: "they say that such and such is bad for you"
you: "who says grandma?"
grandma: "the experts!")
they are looking critically at the studies to see if their conclusions can be drawn from the data they present.
Or you could be right. People don't want to hear the truth about who talks more!
J Golden Rockwell | July 9, 2007, 11:30am | #
The number is a blip. College students talk a lot. They are there for the purpose of information exchange, and their whole mindset is pointed that way.It is just as wrong to draw any conclusion about the rest of us from college students as it would be to proclaim that the average male jogs a mile a day after watching guys in a health club.
barris | July 9, 2007, 11:31am | #
Reinmoose, perhaps it is true in some cases people look at studies critically, but it's probably rare among the general population.Steve Chapman, for example, doesn't give any indication that he's read the study himself, instead going by a newspaper summary (like most of us). He then proceeds to tell us that the study is faulty because in his experience, men tend to talk less.
Ken Shultz | July 9, 2007, 11:32am | #
"I do wonder why people bother doing studies anymore - people don't seem to be swayed by them at all, dismissing them if they don't agree with their previously formed opinion."I need more than one data point. ...and the subjects may not have been representative...
We've got plenty of problems in this country--if you're gonna tell me that being skeptical of authoritative studies is one of 'em, then I'm gonna need more evidence than this thread, that's for sure.
barris | July 9, 2007, 11:33am | #
The number is a blip. College students talk a lot.Let's assume you're right about college students talking more than the rest of us.
But if that's the case, shouldn't female students still talk more than male students? What is it about college that makes men talk more but women stay at about the same level?
Mr. F. Le Mur | July 9, 2007, 11:35am | #
Male college students are not the average man.They often recruit psych students for psych studies, and male psych students are generally more like women than like normal men.
Ken Shultz | July 9, 2007, 11:37am | #
"But if that's the case, shouldn't female students still talk more than male students? What is it about college that makes men talk more but women stay at about the same level?"I thought I raised some pretty good questions in my comment.
...they live and eat communally, and, I suspect, they tend to interact with more women than men in the general population do.
I could list some anecdotes, but they all seem to even out - the chit chatty women are good listeners and the silent men will launch into long speeches when they actually have something to say. I know some very verbose and some very succinct people and I fall into either category depending on who I am speaking with. I do think I talked more on average in college just because we were being asked to speak out constantly. I got together with my college girlfriends recently and discovered I'd forgotten how to talk with them, since there is definitely a different pattern in how you talk with people who all are very passionate and very knowledgeable and aren't worried about offending each other. I couldn't get a word in and found myself accidentally interrupting people simply because I'd finally start speaking after someone else had already started. But I went to a women's college, so I have no idea about college boys.
Reinmoose | July 9, 2007, 11:50am | #
perhaps it is true in some cases people look at studies critically, but it's probably rare among the general population.Likely. I apologize, I probably took your previous comment people wouldn't be swayed by studies because they were closed minded more personally than I probably should have. (It sounded to me like you were directing it at anyone discounting this study, rather than as a generalized statement about even legit studies)
That being said, I don't think you can deny that male college students probably talk a heck of a lot more than their adult counter parts. Get them talking about chip structure and they're difficult to shut up. This could also be a generational difference, where younger males will continue this trend of talking as much as their female counterparts throughout adulthood. It still doesn't make the study at all representative about the current population of men in the United States (or whatever the true population is supposed to be).
wayne | July 9, 2007, 11:59am | #
"But if that's the case, shouldn't female students still talk more than male students? What is it about college that makes men talk more but women stay at about the same level?"Women are maxed out on the jabber scale. It is physically impossible to talk more without installing oiler cups on their jaw joints.
Calvin Coolidge | July 9, 2007, 12:09pm | #
You lose.wsdave | July 9, 2007, 12:29pm | #
I run my mouth constantly. I more than make up for the rest of you.dhex | July 9, 2007, 12:30pm | #
i think we can all agree that business meetings of more than three or four people almost always suck.i'm a chatty cathy but i strive to be entertaining, so i think it all like, works out and stuff.
dhex | July 9, 2007, 12:31pm | #
"They often recruit psych students for psych studies, and male psych students are generally more like women than like normal men."lolz ur gay.
righty | July 9, 2007, 12:41pm | #
For a man who so prizes silence, Steve Chapman sure writes a lot of stupid articles.grumpy realist | July 9, 2007, 1:38pm | #
Interesting to see results if test repeated in standard office environment.Judging from comments in this thread, men like to think they talk less than women.
FinFangFoom | July 9, 2007, 1:45pm | #
"But if that's the case, shouldn't female students still talk more than male students? What is it about college that makes men talk more but women stay at about the same level?"No, if college life requires speaking 16,000 words a day, then that might just be the men talking as much as they need to, and the women's need and "satisfaction" is met by that amount. Kind of like if a big person burns the same amount of calories just sitting around as a smaller person does through heavy exercise.
FinFangFoom | July 9, 2007, 1:59pm | #
It would also be interesting to see the median, standard deviation etc. As one article I saw on the study said that the top word number was a man with 49,000 words and the bottom one was a man with 500.Ken Shultz | July 9, 2007, 2:01pm | #
"Interesting to see results if test repeated in standard office environment."...or better yet, married couples. ...and compare them to lesbian couples and gay couples.
If they all came out about the same, there you go. If women talk more than men, I'd expect gay couples to say very little, married heterosexual couples to land in the middle somewhere and lesbian couples to score as chatterboxes.
The study (assuming Chapman's reporting of the facts related to it are accurate) involves a comparison of the behavior of males and females selected for the same set of traits and placed in a similar social context and a finding of no significant difference. Based on a study like this, it would be reasonable to conclude there isn't a strong correlation or causal relationship between the differences between the groups and the phenomenon being observed and to extrapolate that there may not be a consistent causal relationship between gender and words spoken overall; "may" because it could also be the case that the causal mechanism isn't relevant in the context of college because of the groups that end up going to college or the characteristics of the college context itself. However, this study cannot be extrapolated to say if there is a correlation between words spoken and gender in the general population, since there are many other factors which can influence words spoken which are correlated with gender and a different study design would be needed to answer this question. Of course, this question, the one that the study wasn't designed to answer, is the question that Chapman addresses in his column by citing anecdotal evidence, which is just the caboose in the inevitable trainwreck of reporting that accompanies any "males different (or not different) from females" study.
GILMORE | July 9, 2007, 2:44pm | #
Chapman's observation is pretty silly. Of course grown men are more spare with language. So are grown women. Well, some. But 18-30, boys and girls are equally yaptastic to the extreme. Add to that people like Chapman, a *writer*, whose job it is to churn out language... it seems disingenuous frankly. PLUS! H&R is mostly guys who bullshit all day, as though we're in a bar, arguing over nothing... for lack of being ABLE to be in a bar bullshitting all day, we blog!?And notice the fact that most blogs are a FREAKING SAUSAGE FEST.
This alone shows the whole Strong Silent thing to be an obvious self-perpetuated myth
Count Dracula | July 9, 2007, 3:09pm | #
What is a man?!A miserable pile of secrets!
But enough talk! Have at you!
Ventifact | July 9, 2007, 3:57pm | #
This article does not inspire respect for Chapman, to be honest.NeonCat | July 9, 2007, 5:28pm | #
@ Chapman haters: There seem to be a lot of people without a sense of humor.Honestly, though, in driving it seems a lot of men nowadays have a cell phone glued to their heads. I never thought of men as chatty cathys until I saw it over and over again.
Chad | July 9, 2007, 5:59pm | #
I have to agree with the general sentiment on this thread. The first thought that came across my mind when I saw this report the other day was "sample bias". I know that for myself, at least, I probably spoke 2-3 times as much when I was in college (especially undergraduate) as I do now.College students are simply not a representative sample for the general population in this case, nor is college "gender balanced"...it is something like 57-43 female/male nowadays.
Bobbo | July 9, 2007, 6:12pm | #
The standard deviation was 7301 for women and 8633 for men. The heaviest talker was a man who snapped out 47,000 words a day and the lightest talker was a man who spoke 70 words a day.On the subject of college students the author adds:
"A potential limitation of our analysis is that all participants were university students. The resulting homogeneity in the samples with regard to sociodemographic characteristics may have affected our estimates of daily word usage. However, none of the samples provided support for the idea that women have substantially larger lexical budgets than men. Further, to the extent that sex differences in daily word use are assumed to be biologically based, evolved adaptations (3), they should be detectable among university students as much as in more diverse samples. We therefore conclude, on the basis of available empirical evidence, that the widespread and highly publicized stereotype about female talkativeness is unfounded."
Full article by the study author is at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5834/82?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Matthias+Mehl%2C&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT
I was reading it from a university though, so I may have gone through a subscription wall without noticing it.
Ventifact | July 9, 2007, 7:36pm | #
Thanks Bobbo for bringing some facts to the discussion.A potential limitation of our analysis is that all participants were university students. The resulting homogeneity in the samples with regard to sociodemographic characteristics may have affected our estimates of daily word usage. However, none of the samples provided support for the idea that women have substantially larger lexical budgets than men.
What about socio-economically controlled linguistic factors? Accents, in terms of pronunciation, diction, etc., certainly follow such socio-economic lines. Is there evidence that social influences regarding word budgets do not also actually create a real difference among the larger population or parts thereof in the word budgets of men and women?
And anyway, the authors switch back and forth between the idea of "biologically based" (by which they mean "innate") sex differences and any sex difference (i.e. socially created differences, which would include the authors' term "female talkativeness").
Further, to the extent that sex differences in daily word use are assumed to be biologically based, [...] they should be detectable among university students as much as in more diverse samples.
Well, that could be reliable except that university students are selected for their verbal abilities! College entrance essays --hello! Chad noted that colleges have more women than men in them -- so, like, couldn't it be precisely the fact that students are selected for verbal ability, and men tend not to have it, that promotes the gender (")imbalance(") of colleges while also filtering out the population so that only those who are good with words make it into the study? Now, I'll also note that this line of questioning I bring up follows the idea that verbal ability and word budgets correlate positively, which I also find dubious.
And anyway, talkativeness and word budgets are not the same thing, by which I mean that chatting and soliloquying do not leave the same impression in the mind. Women could be chattier, and men more pompous, which would mean women use lots of words in conversation and men use lots of words lecturing others, but still they use the same number of words.
Also this study fails to adequately examine the behavior of the general population because it studied a group of peers -- equals (more or less). But in the general population men and women are not always likely to be equals, in terms of the jobs they have, both moneymaking jobs and homemaking jobs.
My ultimate impression is that the study is interesting to examine critically, but such critical examination renders the study meaningless in terms of its actual conclusion because it really does not address concerns over the representativeness of the population sample it used.
Dirk Flinthart | July 10, 2007, 7:30am | #
Brother!Jort | July 10, 2007, 12:46pm | #
Oh come on. Like your lack of "life" experience with talkative males is any more of a representative sample.Mr. Anecdote | July 10, 2007, 1:21pm | #
I agree it should be broken down by age categoy.I will say my 5 year old daughter already talk more than her 9 and 8 y.o. brothers combined, unless the topic turns to star wars.
My wife and I talk about the same amount, but maybe she gets it out of her system dring the day?
j.c. | July 10, 2007, 4:54pm | #
As with IQ men are likely more spread at the extremes, with extremely verbal and extremely nonverbal men averaging out. Women are probably more statistically centered on the bell curve point of 16k.Oh wait, I mean "yup".
Bob Irving | July 10, 2007, 8:54pm | #
I would suggest the verbiage results are highly unlikely to be replicated outside the demographic of the sampled group. And it would be my guess that American males tend to be considerably more verbose than those from many other nations: i have often reflected that they seem inclined to 'think out loud'.I find that if you ask a man about golf, or his dearest topic, himself, he can go on long after anyone else could possibly care.