Study Determining Whether Women Truly Talk More Than Men

In 2007, a study conducted by the Psychology department made headlines by concluding that men and women both speak roughly the same number of words per day, debunking the common stereotype that women talk more than men. 

 

To further refine their results, the research team including faculty member Matthias Mehl, graduate student Colin Tidwell, and postdoctoral fellow Valeria Pfeifer analyzed data from 22 studies in 4 countries with more than 2,000 participants spanning the ages of 10-94. Following up in this way, they have determined that while most age groups have a fairly equal number of words spoken, women aged 25-64 do indeed say up to 3,000 more words each day than their men counterparts.

 

With these latest findings, they hope to determine possible explanations for this variance between ages and genders, as well as look at how an individual's health is related to their level of social engagement.