A new study in the journal Science has generated a lot of talk - and that's the point. The scientists behind it were trying to learn if there's any truth to the stereotype that women talk more than men. That stereotype has somehow generated a statistic that men say 7,000 words a day. Women, it says, babble on for more than three times that.
So the scientists had researchers undertake the ear-numbing project of counting every word that 400 college-age volunteers said over roughly the course of a week. The study did indeed find women, on average, using more words per day than men: 16,215 to 15,669. That's a difference of about nine percent.
Hardly enough to justify a stereotype.
And the most talkative person in the study was a man. He managed to spout off more than 47,000 words during the time period. To be fair, the least talkative person was also a man. He only managed to spit out about 500 words.
Needless to say, this won't be the last word on the matter. The scientists think the use of college students for their study might have added social factors that will skew the results, and they're going to try it again with an older population or with cultural variations. But for now, they're comfortable saying that being a jabbermouth is less an issue of gender and more an issue of someone who just likes to hear their own voice. And anyway, we all know who the most talkative people are.
The ones sitting beside us on an airplane.
Jeff Field
NBC Action News Executive Producer
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