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By Paulina Dela Flor
SINCE time immemorial, it’s always been a
battle between the sexes. Man and woman pitted against each other in
a rivalry which is both complementary and entertaining, to say the
least.
Over the centuries, society has learned to
associate certain human qualities with a specific gender, used to
distinguish characteristics that are either “masculine” or
“feminine.” For example, strength, athleticism and bravery have
male connotations while the ideals of compassion, grace and
communication have been attributed to the female gender.
Well, it looks like one such generalization has
been turned topsy-turvy with the latest scientific research, which
claims that women are not the “chattier” sex. Prior
misconception placed talkativeness and its facets of communication
as a distinctly female penchant, but according to the facts below
presented by Ananova, men are just as chatty as women.
Researchers bugged 400 students to log their
chats and found little difference in word count between the sexes.
The University of Arizona study, published in Science, conflicts
with previous US research suggesting women talk almost three times
as much as men.
Whether someone was an introvert or an extrovert
was more important, said relationship experts.
In the study, women spoke a daily average of
16,215 words during their waking hours, and men 15,669 words.
Lead researcher Matthias Mehl said: “What’s
a 500-word difference, compared to the 45,000-word difference
between the most and the least talkative persons?”
The most talkative man in the study used 47,000
words while the least used a little more than 500 over a few days.
Relate spokeswoman Paula Hall, a relationship
psychotherapist, said the findings matched her experience.
“It’s not fair to say men don’t talk.
Blokes in the pub don’t stand around in silence,” she said.
“The problem is not how much people talk or don’t talk, the
problem is how well people listen.”
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