Do men or women talk more? Study: Depends on age

In the stereotypical view of the general public, women are often perceived as being more talkative, and the term “gossip” is used to describe women who talk a lot and enjoy spreading rumors. But is this really the case? Recent research has found that the answer to this question depends on people’s age, with women talking more at certain ages.

Colin Tidwell, a clinical psychology doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona, said, “There is a strong cross-cultural assumption that women talk much more than men. We wanted to see if this assumption holds true after empirical testing.”

In 2007, Matthias Mehl, a psychology professor at the university, conducted a study on this issue. He asked 500 male and female participants to wear recording devices to record their daily conversations for analysis.

The analysis results showed that men and women speak roughly the same number of words per day, around 16,000 words. However, this result was criticized for its limitations as almost all participants were of college age and lived in the same city – Austin, Texas.

Now, Mehl and Tidwell along with other scholars are conducting further research on this issue using a larger and more diverse sample. They analyzed 630,000 audio recordings from 22 different studies conducted at 4 institutions in different countries, involving 2,197 participants aged 10 to 94.

This latest research indicates that only in the age group of 25 to 64, there is a significant difference in the number of words spoken per day between men and women, a data gap which previous studies lacked.

For this age group, women speak an average of 21,845 words per day, which is 3,275 words more than men’s 18,570 words, translating to talking an extra 20 minutes a day. In other age groups, men and women speak about the same number of words each day.

Researchers are unsure why women tend to be chattier during these 40 years, but they suggest that one possible reason is that this period often coincides with raising children, where women typically play a more primary role in childcare, leading them to speak more to their children during this time.

Mehl said, “Gender differences in childcare and family caregiving could be one possible reason for this variance.”

He pointed out that if biological factors like hormones were the main cause, then there should be considerable gender differences during the emerging adulthood phase (roughly ages 18 to 25) as well. If societal generational changes were the driving force, then gender differences among older participants should gradually increase, but this is not the case.

He mentioned that although women may speak more at certain stages of their lives, it is noteworthy that significant differences exist between individuals in terms of the number of words spoken daily.

In this study, the least talkative person was a male, speaking only about 100 words a day, while the most talkative person was also a male, speaking over 120,000 words a day.

He said, “The differences among individuals within our species are much greater than the differences between the sexes.”

Furthermore, the study found that regardless of gender or age, on average, participants seemed to have decreased the number of words they speak daily over the years. The data analyzed in this study was collected from 2005 to 2018, during which the daily number of words spoken by participants decreased from about 16,000 to around 13,000, a reduction of approximately 3,000 words.

Mehl suggested that this phenomenon could be due to the rise of digital communication tools such as text messages and social media, but further research is needed to confirm the true reasons.

In future research, Mehl’s research team hopes to explore the relationship between conversational habits and overall health.

Mehl stated, “There is strong evidence suggesting that socializing is related to health, at least as much as physical activity and sleep, making it another aspect of healthy behavior.”

The results of the above study were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.