ANN/AFP/THE STAR – It’s often said that women talk more than men.
In 2007, researchers at the University of Arizona challenged this belief by demonstrating that both sexes speak, on average, the same number of words per day.
However, a more in-depth, recent study qualifies this conclusion by highlighting that while women appear to be more loquacious, this difference is only evident within a specific age group.
To reach this conclusion, a research team from the University of Arizona analysed nearly 630,000 recordings from 22 studies conducted in four countries.
Their sample of 2,197 people is four times larger than that of the 2007 study.
“There is a strong cross-cultural assumption that women talk a lot more than men. We wanted to see whether or not this assumption holds when empirically tested,” explains co-load study author, Colin Tidwell, quoted in a news release.
Published in the Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, the research reveals a notable gender difference in the number of words spoken per day, but only in the 25-65 age group. Women in this age group speak an average of 21,845 words per day, or 3,000 more than men.
So why does this disparity only appear in adulthood? The researchers suggest one hypothesis: the years when women speak more frequently align with the times they are caring for children, as women continue to handle most of the “parental work”.
“Gender-linked differences in child-rearing and family care are one possibility that could account for this difference. If biological factors like hormones were to be the main cause, a sizable gender difference should have also been present among emerging adults. If societal generational changes were to be the driving force, there should have been a gradually increasing gender difference with older participants. Neither, though, was the case,” says Matthias Mehl, senior author of the study and a professor in the University of Arizona Department of Psychology.
A dying art?
While this study sheds new light on gender differences in verbal communication, it also emphasises the diversity of individual behaviours.
The least talkative participant, a man, uttered an average of 100 words per day, while the most verbose individual – also a man – exceeded 120,000 words per day. Proof, as Mehl points out, that “we humans are so much more different individually than the two genders systematically”.
The researchers also noted a downward trend in the number of words spoken over the years.
Between 2005 and 2018, the daily average dropped from 16,000 to 13,000 words.
This trend is likely connected to the rise of digital communication, which favours written messages at the expense of face-to-face interactions.
So if we’re talking less, what impact could this have on our social relationships, our health or our well-being?
To answer this question, Mehl is developing a tool capable of measuring our conversations, similar to how wearable devices monitor sleep or physical exercise.
“I’m fascinated by the idea that we know how much we need to sleep, we know how much we need to exercise, and people are wearing smart watches all the time, but we have no idea how much we’re supposed to socialise,” the researcher says. Perhaps it’s time to return the art of conversation to its rightful place in our connected, but sometimes silent, lives.
