Men talk just as much as women

Men talk as much as women do, US researchers say after counting every word that 400 volunteers spoke.

Their study, published in the journal Science, challenges the common wisdom that women are somehow biologically programmed to talk more. However, it also shows that people do often fulfill gender roles when it comes to what they talk about.

“Women and men both use on average about 16,000 words per day, with very large individual differences around this mean,” write the researchers, led by Assistant Professor Matthias Mehl, a psychologist at the University of Arizona.

There were, however, stereotypical differences in subject matter.

Men talk more about technology, work, money. They also use more numbers compared to women who talk more about fashion and about relationships.

The differences between two men or between two women were far greater than overall sex differences.

And both sexes can babble on. “Sometimes you find a stream of words but people don’t say very much,” Asst Prof Mehl says. “They just talk and talk and talk.”