Church of the Customer Blog
« Men, women and their word count | Main | Fan-created comics »
July 06, 2007
Men, women and their word count
So it turns out that men aren't completely cavemen.
Men speak just as many words per day -- about 15,669 -- vs. the 16,215 women do during a 17-hour day. That's according to research (subscription req'd) published today in the journal Science. The findings contradict widely reported, yet unsubstantiated claims that women speak up to 20,000 words per day vs. 7,000 uttered by men.
Science reports that the researchers arrived at their conclusions by attaching electronically activated recorders to various male and female college-student volunteers over a six-year period. Although they didn't know it at the time, the devices were recording the volunteers' conversations for 30 seconds every 12.5 minutes. Afterward, their word counts were tallied.
What these new findings indicate is that women are not biologically programmed to talk more than men. Word of mouth programs constructed on the supposition that women talk three times more than men should be reassessed.
Now if only the researchers had categorized the subjects of the conversations they'd recorded.
Other blogs that reference Men, women and their word count:
College student volunteers wore a device for six years? Yeah, right.
pseudo-science: what does this prove? Only good to get the networks and bloggers and commenters yakking mindlessly.
Heh, 60. What does the study prove? Perhaps not much, but big marketing plans are often based on much less.
I read the story in this morning's paper, Ben - something I always questioned but glad it was researched. Your right about marketing based on much less than this information.
I'm just glad men only got beat by 546 words in 17 hours! Heck that's only 32 words per hour less. With a bit more training and intervention, men should be able to turn around this competitive situation in less than a generation or two. It's up to fathers now to correct the errors of their ways and make sure their sons, have a say in the future of mankind!
The study was only on 20-30 year olds so I'm not sure we can generalize this to all men and women. I'm not convinced either way yet.
Laura
I hope that doesn't mean the same college students wore these for six years, otherwise they need to shut-up and study more so they don't take six years to graduate.
All that proves is that college students speak more consistently even. I seriously doubt this trend holds up over time. My wife speaks far more than I and we're often told that we seem to communicate better and more frequently than others our age.
Now, I'd be willing to believe that men type far more than women... email, blogs, etc. I wouldn't be surprised someday that men and women both have the same amount to say, but then men prefer the ability to think about and make corrections to what they have to say as they say it. And that they are less interested in specifically who hears them, so long as they have the opportunity to say it. Electronic graffiti, if you will.
This makes sense to me. Most studies into this find that women don't talk more than men - but that people PERCEIVE women as talking more than men.
According to Dale Spender:
"The talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men but with silence. Women have not been judged on the grounds of whether they talk more than men, but of whether they talk more than silent women."
That was taken from the article below, which deals with the issue of the perception of how much women talk, vs the reality, very nicely...
http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/prejudice/women/
Another supposition that should be reassessed is the rumor that Eskimos have more than a hundred words for snow. It's not true; they just have many ways of describing snow. (Just like we have here in Wisconsin.)
OK, the falt has been danced around and this topic is old so few may read my input but what the heck.
College students surveyed?
Let's see, we have men and women who for a large portion of the day are in controlled environments were talking is regulated. So, the excess in words by women is realy gained in 4-6 hours prior to and after class and study hours.
You do the math.... but the concept of this study was flawed from the start. Maybe if they had instead only monitored students outside of class and study related hours it would have been more accurate.
Why do we continually waste money studying the obvious and/or unimportant topics?
The study may be irrelevant, however, I will personally find some use in passing it along to my wife. She says I never talk. Thanks for the post.
society has a great effect on the language used by man and women .In other word ,the dominated women find themselves submissive as a result they try to be so prestigious in their speech and appearance ;however, man try to concentrate only economy as a target point. we can also state the increase of testosterone has an impact on the language used either by man or woman.
Armand Rousso
http://education.armandrousso.biz/
