Who speaks more, the woman or the man? Who writes more, the male or female academic? While the latter might still be up for debate, it turns out the answer to the first is: they’re equal! A year ago, Dr. Louann Brizendone, a nueropsychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco claimed in her book The Female Brain that women spoke on average nearly three times that of men. This disturbed Dr. James Pennebaker of Univeristy of Texas (Austin), who had been collecting data over several years which highlighted that the sexes were nearly equal when it came to their use of words. In his article published in Science last week, he- along with fellow researchers and authors Matthias Mehl (the lead author of study), Simine Vazire, Nairan Ramirez-Esparza, and Richard Slater- addressed the question about sex differences in daily word use by outfitting participants with an electronically activated recorder (EAR- isn’t that clever). This device conveniently tracks participant’s moment-to-moment interactions. The EAR selectively “hears” by turning on every 12 minutes to record for about 30 seconds. Participants wear the device or keep it near them, and can’t tell when it’s on or off- thereby minimizing tampering with the recording. They collected the “chatter patterns” of nearly four hundred participants in six samples from Texas, Arizona, and Mexico. Participants wore the EAR for several days, and the researchers estimated the total number of words uttered. The result? Pennebaker and colleagues found no significant differences in words uttered: men and women on average spoke around 16,000 words a day (phew. my jaw hurts just looking at the number).

Now I bet most of you just went to your last heavy-duty conversation with your partner and either thought “she talked my ear off” or “he just sat there and grunted occasionally.” Well, subject matter might make a difference. Women to tend to talk more about relationships in general, but when men care about the topic, they too will get involved. And besides, hasn’t everyone seen the group of guys talking endlessly about sports, adult cartoons, or cars? Turns out that talking about the latest gossip, the inside news, or the last word may be completely unrelated to gender.

Further Reading:

Scientific American.com

University of Texas at Austin

www.sciencemag.org (subscription may be required)