Do women really talk more than men? A new look at the debate

The stereotype that women outtalk men persists across many cultures. Yet, a prominent study in 2007 challenged that notion by finding that men and women each speak around 16,000 words per day, on average.

A new, larger investigation revisits this topic and offers a more nuanced view: women may indeed be more talkative – but only during a specific stage of life.

Study co-lead author Colin Tidwell is a clinical psychology doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona (U of A). 

“There is a strong cross-cultural assumption that women talk a lot more than men,” said Tidwell. “We wanted to see whether or not this assumption holds when empirically tested.”

Talking varies by age and gender

Analyzing data from nearly 2,200 participants, the researchers found that women aged 25 to 65 speak about 3,000 more words per day than men in the same age bracket. 

However, in adolescence (10-17), emerging adulthood (18-24), and older adulthood (65 and up), they observed no notable gender gap in daily word count.

The study also suggests that people overall might be talking less than before, which the researchers suspect could be linked to growing reliance on digital communication.

The claim that women talk more

In 2007, University of Arizona psychologist Matthias Mehl investigated the common claim that women are significantly more talkative than men. 

Participants in that study – about 500 men and women – wore a device called the EAR (Electronically Activated Recorder), which periodically recorded brief clips of their everyday conversations.

After estimating each participant’s total daily word count, the researchers concluded that no significant gender difference existed – a finding that appeared in the journal Science and garnered national headlines. 

Nevertheless, critics pointed out that most participants were college-aged and all lived in Austin, Texas, limiting the study’s diversity.

Almost two decades later, Mehl collaborated with Tidwell, Valeria Pfeifer, a postdoctoral researcher at the U of A, and Alexander Danvers, a former U of A postdoctoral fellow, to repeat the experiment on a larger scale. 

The new work incorporates 630,000 EAR recordings from 22 separate studies across four countries, covering individuals aged 10 to 94 – a total of 2,197 participants, which is four times the original sample size.

Why do women talk more?

Among all age groups studied, a significant difference between men’s and women’s word counts emerged only in early to middle adulthood (25-64). During these years, women spoke about 21,845 words per day, while men spoke about 18,570.

The researchers remain unsure exactly why women might talk more during this period, but they propose that parenting responsibilities could be one contributing factor.

“Gender-linked differences in child rearing and family care are one possibility that could account for this difference,” said Mehl, the senior author of the study and a professor in the U of A Department of Psychology. 

“If biological factors like hormones were to be the main cause, a sizable gender difference should have also been present among emerging adults. If societal generational changes were to be the driving force, there should have been a gradually increasing gender difference with older participants. Neither, though, was the case.”

Talking trends across time

While the data suggest that women do speak more than men during early and middle adulthood, Mehl highlighted that individual differences can overshadow such group patterns. 

The least talkative person in the entire study – a man – spoke roughly 100 words a day, while the most talkative participant – also a man – exceeded 120,000 words.

“We humans are so much more different individually than the two genders systematically,” Mehl said.

Another revealing finding was that the average word count across participants has been declining since 2005, slipping from about 16,000 words per day to about 13,000.

“We did a full analysis looking at what year the data were collected and found that, indeed, 300 spoken words on average per year go missing,” noted study co-lead author Pfeifer.

Although the exact cause for this decline is not fully established, researchers suspect that digital technologies – such as texting, social media, and online chats – could be supplanting spoken conversations.

Conversation as a health behavior

Mehl emphasized the need for further inquiry into the effects of talkativeness and social engagement on overall health. He is currently co-developing a device called SocialBit, akin to a Fitbit, that tracks the duration of daily conversations without recording their content. Instead, it relies on an algorithm to detect whether ambient sounds contain speech.

“I’m fascinated by the idea that we know how much we need to sleep, we know how much we need to exercise, and people are wearing Fitbits all the time, but we have no idea how much we’re supposed to socialize,” he said. 

“The evidence is very strong that socializing is linked to health, at least to the same extent as physical activity and sleep are. It’s just another health behavior.”

Future research directions 

Overall, the follow-up study offers a refined perspective on the question of whether women speak more than men. While the gap exists during early and middle adulthood, no significant difference emerges in adolescence, emerging adulthood, or older age. 

Beyond that, both genders may be speaking fewer words over time – possibly due to a shift toward digital forms of communication.

As researchers continue to investigate the intersection between conversation, well-being, and modern technology, novel tools like SocialBit may shed light on just how much human dialogue contributes to health, reinforcing the importance of face-to-face interactions in an increasingly digital era.

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