Women Are Said to Be More Picky Than Men, How According to Science?

Women are often considered more talkative than men. (Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Until now, the assumption that women talk more than men is agreed upon by almost everyone. However, a study shows that context is the key to determining whether it is true or not.

Women, he said, have a quota to talk more than men. Even myths say that women usually have to spend 10 thousand to 25 thousand words per day.

If connected with everyday facts, it may be true. Women talk more about diverse topics. Women who are considered to talk more often have negative connotations.

"Women are widely known to be more talkative than men," experts said in a report in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

There is no significant difference.

The research team conducted a study in the journal Science in 2007. The results of the study showed that both men and women actually emit almost the same number of words, an average of 16 thousand words per day.

However, these findings are questionable, as methodological limitations such as the fact that this study was conducted on a small sample of university students, which does not represent the general population, make the findings somewhat dubious.

Then in 2014 Colin Tidwell at the University of Arizona and his colleagues replicated this study, but using data from five times as many participants, a total of 2,197. In this study, respondents were of various ages and four different countries.

A study says the number of words a person speaks every day is not always based on gender. (Unsplash)

In this study, participants wore an EAR, an electronically activated recorder that recorded ambient sounds periodically throughout the day for a short time. They were not aware of when exactly the device was recording.

After collecting 600 thousand recordings, the tool that transcribed the voice counted the number of words spoken by each participant. The data was then processed to estimate the total number of words spoken per day.

The results showed that in adulthood and middle age, between 24 and 65 years old, men on average spoke 11,950 words per day, compared to 13,349 words for women.

"This is consistent with the social stereotype that women talk more than men," the research team wrote.

In the pre-adolescent to adolescent age, 10 to 17 years, there is a slight difference, with women on average talking 513 words more than men. As for adulthood, 18-24 years, the difference is a little more, namely 841 words per day.

Meanwhile, for participants over 65 years of age, the results were the opposite. Women spoke less than men, with a difference of 788 words per day.

Depends on Context

The stereotype that women talk more is also tested by a study from Harvard led by Jukka-Pekka Onnela, a biostatistician at the Harvard School of Public Health and David Lazer from Northeastern University in 2014.

Unlike previous studies, it turns out that the context and setting or setting are the most determining factors in how many words a person says.

In his research, Onnela and his team collected data using electronic devices about interactions in two different settings, namely students collaborating on a joint assignment project, and employees socializing during their lunch breaks.

As a result, in the group of students, women tend to talk more, especially in longer and more intense conversations. This happens perhaps because of a collaborative effort to quickly complete a task together.

But this pattern changes when groups get bigger or include more than five people, it's the men who take up more talking space. Meanwhile, in other situations, such as employees at lunch breaks, there is almost no significant difference between men and women.

Research in 2014 showed that context determines how many words people utter in a day. (Unsplash)

In a simple way, it can be concluded that the way of speaking is greatly influenced by the social situation where it is located, and with whom it interacts.

"It may be surprising that context makes such a big difference. These findings show the importance of objective measurements in studies of human social behavior," said Onnela.

This finding concludes that the way a person speaks is more influenced by social context, dynamics, groups, and stages of life, not solely whether he or she is male or female.

So, do you still believe that women are more fussy than men?