Is it true that women pronounce several times more words a day than men?

There is a belief in society that women are many times more talkative than men. In recent decades, this opinion has leaked to popular science literature on psychology and is perceived by many as an established fact. We checked if there is scientific confirmation of this stereotype.

In many books and articles stereotype The female talkativeness is reinforced by supposedly scientifically confirmed statistics, comparing the number of words spoken by women and men in a day. Someone mentioned 7000 words in women against 2000 in men. And someone declaresthat on average women are able to say 30,000 words, and men are only 12,000. But perhaps the most common statistics, widely cited on English, Spanish, German, Russian and other languages ​​- this is 20,000 versus 7000. According to the plot "Channel One", physiologists explain this by the fact that the need to speak a lot, is quickly and constantly laid down in a woman with nature: “Imagine a cave. In the cave, women and children who had to enter into communication with each other all the time, while a man, creeping up to prey, was almost always silent. ”

The assertion that women use about 20,000 words a day, and men - about 7000, gained world popularity after its publication in book "Women's Brain" Luann Breezendine. Breezendine -Doctor of Medical Sciences, neuropsychiatrist, researcher, clinician and professor of the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), who wrote several books about the human brain. Typically, authors with similar regalia are classified as authoritative sources, and their statements are rarely subjected to doubt. But in this case, the statistics of the breeze CALL The disapproval of colleagues due to a link to a dubious source for scientific publication. It was a 1997 self -development book "The language of conversation: how to use a conversation for good and pleasure" The authorship of Alan Garner and Allan Pisa, specialists in communication and relationships. Alas, Garner and Piz do not specify where they got their statistics “20,000 versus 7000 words”.

A year later, Allan Piz published the next bookIn which he already brought other numbers: 6000–8000 for women against 2000–4000 in men. And in an interview with CNN in 2004 piz attributed Women as many as 20,000 - 24,000 words versus 7000 - 10,000 words in men. Apparently, Piz took the idea he liked from somewhere and processed it at his discretion, arbitrarily replacing the numbers from publication to publication, from interviews to interviews. At the same time, Pisa should not be judged with all scientific severity: his works are usually sold in the category of “Books on self -development” and do not claim to be scientific reliability. Piz himself does not hide the lack of education in the field of neurology or psychiatry. He Positions Myself as a “orator-motivator”, “an expert on the language of the body” and “a relationship consultant”. 

Piz was far from the first who emphasized the difference in the number of words pronounced on a day by women and men. In the 1994 textbook "Psychological assistance to criminal criminals" Its author, professor of criminology of California State University, Rut Masters quotes book 1993 of the gospel-gospel Gary Smolly about family relationships: “There is a huge difference between the number of words of a man and a woman. By the end of the day, the man spent almost all his words, and the woman is still warming up. She had to say thousands of words, and since the number of words of her husband is exhausted, the conversations often end with dry sessions of questions and answers. ”

Even earlier mention was found in the book of James Dobson 1987 "Love for life", also having a religious subtext: “Studies show that girls are endowed with more linguistic abilities than boys, and this talent accompanies them all their lives. Simply put, she speaks more than him. Having become an adult, she usually expresses her feelings and thoughts much better than her husband, and her often annoys his restraint. Perhaps God gave her 50,000 words a day, and her husband is only 25,000. He comes home with work with 24,975 words spent and just grumbling all evening. He plunges into the evening viewing of football, while his wife dies from the desire to spend the remaining 25,000 words. ” From here, according to Dobson, problems in relations come. Since Dobson only expresses a personal assumption that “perhaps God gave” certain verbal quotas to a woman and a man, we cannot blame him for the lack of a link to the source.

Is there any share of scientific reliability in all these statements? The topic of the features of the speech of men and women began to be explored at about the same time - at the end of the 20th century. According to analysis 56 experiments conducted by the Linguists in 1993, in only two of them women spoke more men. In the rest, men spoke about the same or even more.

The authors of the other research (1997) recorded verbal interactions of 153 men and women in two days. On average, women said 8805 words a day, and men - 6073.

Professor of the phonetics of Pennsylvania University, Mark Lieberman, having read the Breezendine's book “Women's Brain”, was so outraged that he took up the refutation of the myth. According to him, the statement “20,000 versus 7000 words”, which is printed on the cover of the book, “quoted in reviews around the world, from New York Times to Mumbai Mirror and quickly turns into“ factual ”. In 2006, he spent his own studyin which it analyzed collection Of the 5850 telephone conversations lasting up to ten minutes each. Men spoke an average of 6% more than women. Nevertheless, Lieberman noted that his study considered the behavior of men and women at the moment when they were already involved in a telephone conversation. It did not take into account that, perhaps, picked the phone, the men plunged, for example, in the silent reading of newspapers, and the women went in search of the next interlocutor.

A group of researchers from the United States conducted another studyLaid from 1998 to 2004. Scientists issued 396 participants in the experiment an automatic recording device that they wore for several days. The results showed that women on average pronounced 16 215 words per day, and men - 15,669. Scientists recognized these differences statistically insignificant.

Thus, scientific studies refute the statements of Breezendine and all the authors preceding her that women speak two (three, four) times more men. Mark Lieberman He thinksWhat this myth arose from a sexist stereotype and found a pseudo-scientific rationale in books on pop psychology and self-development: “I think this meme was invented by a marriage consultant about 30 years ago as a pair of communication with problems in communication, and then other authors grabbed and spread it, changing the numbers to their taste.” By the way, after a flurry of critical articles addressed to the book by Luann Breezendine “Women's Brain” published Lieberman and other scientists in magazines Scientific American And NatureBreezendine Recognized Mark Lieberman thanked her mistake and promised to delete false statistics from future publications of the book so as not to perpetuate the myth.

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What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Is it true that men distinguish fewer shades of color than women?
2. Nature. Neurosexism: The Myth That Men and Women Have Different Brains.
3. Forbes. Unfulfilled mind. How neurobiology has proved that there is no “female” and “male” brain.
4. The Guardian. Meet the Neuroscientist Shattering the Myth of the Gendered Brain.