Battle of the Blabbers

The stereotype of gabby women and reticent men can be thrown out the window, along with unfounded claims to the contrary by pop psychiatrist Louann Brizendine. 

A recent study, inspired by Brizendine’s groundless claim that “a woman uses about 20,000 words a day, while a man uses only about 7,000” has found that both sexes use around 16,000 words a day.

“These findings have been reported widely by national media and have entered the cultural mainstream,” said James W. Pennebaker, a psychologist at the University of Texas, and study co-author. “There is no large-scale study that systematically has recorded the natural conversations of large groups of people for extended period of time.”

With their work cut out for them, the team of psychologists spent eight years fine tuning a way to eavesdrop and record conversations until they come up with the electronically activated recorder (with the apt acronym EAR). This inconspicuous digital recorder tracks people’s interactions and conversations without the wearer knowing it.

Altogether they sampled and analyzed the yammering of 396 men and women over more than 12,000 days. They found that women spoke on average 16,215 words in a day and men a shade fewer at 15,669. But that difference was not statistically significant.

The final sentence of today’s Science paper leaves no room for further error: “We therefore conclude, on the basis of available empirical evidence, that the widespread and highly publicized stereotype about female talkativeness is unfounded,” the authors write. 

And now, a joke from the NYTimes by Donald McNeil Jr, which makes up for the fact that they were guilty of perpetuating Brizendine’s myth:

Man: Study here says women talk twice as much as men.

Wife: Of course we do. We have to repeat everything we say.

Man: What?