In The July 5, 2007 Edition Of The Arizona ...

In the July 5, 2007 edition of the Arizona Republic, there was an article that addressed a long-standing assumption that many people have about the differences between men and women. The article asked the question, “Who talks more, men or women?” According to a recent experiment conducted by the University of Arizona, the difference between the number of words spoken daily by men and women is really insignificant. The experiment included giving nearly 400 University students over a six year period a digital recorder to wear that was speech activated. The students wore the recorders an average of 17 hours per day. An assistant professor of psychology at the U of A told the Republic that, although the findings were based on a younger generation, “they should hold up across different age groups.” One of my questions is, “HOW DOES HE KNOW THAT?”

I wonder if these findings would change if the same digital recorders were put on husbands and wives? I wonder how things would change if they were put on men at the local barbershop as opposed to the women at the local hair salon? I wonder how they could change if they were used during Bunko as opposed to Monday Night Football?

Are we coming to our conclusions about how much men and women talk based mostly on our experiences or are our conclusions based more on stereotypes and traditional ideas? While this "Who Talks More?" illustration may seem a little silly, how often do we make judgment about people based on what we "know", even though when we really don’t "know?"