Girl Talk
Friday 18th February, 2011: New academic research out today has dispelled one of history’s oldest stereoptypes by revealing that men actually speak more words per day than their female counterparts but it is women who have the ‘gift of the gab’ when it comes to social communication.
The study(1), commissioned by female friendly insurer Sheilas’ Wheels to test the reliabilty of gender communication stereotypes, is the first of its kind to examine the complexity of male and female language used in different situations.
The research found that when talking about serious issues such as current affairs men and women were on the same wavelength in terms of the language used, but while socialising women are the far more skilled communicators.
According to the research, men do not express themselves as well as women when chatting to friends because their words contain less variety. Men also struggle more than women when paying compliments as they rely heavily on words such as ‘you’, ‘really’ and ‘nice’, whereas women’s compliments are more detailed and so they sound more genuine. The word ‘nice’ was used in nearly a quarter of all male compliments recorded during the study and ‘good’ in a fifth (20 per cent)(2).
The research also found that men’s speech is 10 per cent more predictable than women’s in social situations(3). The gap widened even further when they examined men and women paying compliments, with 90 per cent of the words used by men in this context being predictable, wheras for women it was just 79 per cent.
Supporting research found that female nattering is - ironically - an old wives’ tale, with only two of 56 separate studies on the difference in communication between men and women concluding that women use more words per day than men – while 24 concluded that men use more.
Professor Geoffrey Beattie, Head of Psychological Science at the University of Manchester who led the research, commented: “We know that stereotypes often take on a life of their own, but the difference between the myth of the female chatterbox and the reality was astounding. It is men who are more likely to talk for the sake of talking when engaged in social chitchat by recycling their words with ritualistic and redundant language that doesn’t contain new information.
“Perhaps it is now time to finally recognise the incredible similarities between men and women in their use of language and accept that female ‘nattering’ is little more than a cultural myth.”
Jacky Brown at Sheilas’ Wheels commented: “We’ve long known that the assumption that men are better drivers is a myth so we were eager to see if other stereotypes about women would stand up to scientific scrutiny. This research shows that men can learn a lot from the way that women talk to their friends. It’s time for blokes to swap their clichés for more colourful words and explain why something is ‘nice’ when giving a compliment.”
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For further information please contact the Sheilas’ Wheels press office at Mischief on 020 7100 9999 or email sheilaswheels@mischiefpr.com
Professor Geoffrey Beattie is available for interviews and the full research report is available upon request.
Notes to Editors:
(1) Research based on a literary review and qualiative study carried out by the University of Manchester: The Information Content of Male and Female Speech When They Talk About Serious Issues and Engage in Social Conversation.
The team of researchers carried recording devices over a one week period in order to transcribe 50 conversations, which were split between men and women in serious and social conversations. The ‘Cloze procedure’ was then employed in which each conversation was given to five volunteers who read five different versions with every fifth word removed and were asked to guess the missing word.
(2) Manes, J, and Wolfson, N, (1981). The compliment formula. In F. Coulmans (Ed.). Conversational routine: explorations in standardized communication situations and patterned speech. The Hague: Mouton.
(3) Words could be guessed 71 per cent of the time for women and 80.9 per cent of the time for men. While talking about current affairs and other serious issues, the missing word could be predicted 59.7 per cent of the time for women and 58.6 per cent of the time for men.
