Question about the presumed communicative differences between women and men. [Details inside].

Statistics don’t lie.

I don’t usually have such an issue when I’m with other sociologists because we know why those presumed differences are there and that, very often, they are not.

An attractive woman would make an interesting, insightful statement. A man would agree with her.

All of the people in the room would assume the guy was thinking with his d*ck and discount his statement, and the insightful statement from the woman.

I think you would find that there are general trends, but I would be very cautious about generalizations.

As a rather poor example, my marriage counselor suggested that we read “Men are from Mars…” and it was pretty clear that when it came to communication, I was the man and he was the woman.

I think it has much more to do with temperament and conditioning than penises and vaginas.
Sure, some women often like to talk things through, and some men tend to be problem solvers, but…really, personality and personal growth work is the ticket out of the communication cesspool. I’m a thinking woman, not prone to irrational emotional outbursts and resent that many women get pegged as emotional basket cases, but, if you’re a “feeler” more so than a thinker, then yes, communication can go south in a heartbeat.

Feelings are not facts.

Is this a serious question or is there a joke in there somewhere?

@nikipedia There should be…hard to resist huh? lol

@nikipedia Whenever someone mentions John Gray, I have a hard time remembering that they are almost never trolling me, personally.

Both serious and joke-ish, @nikipedia.
I am not sure about the definition but I thought that the wording was a bit paradoxal.

I forgot to mention that (in this hypothetical setting) not only the group come together to discuss, they also have the task to seek for solutions to tackle the ‘problems’.

By the way, I have both books (Gray, and Tannen) but have never read a page from them.
Typical male??

I am a female -ist who studies sex differences in human memory. I will say that when I talk about my work with men, they often seem intent on making some kind of completely unfunny joke. For instance, when I talk about memory changes across the menstrual cycle, they ask me when is the worst time to have a disagreement with their wives. I know they think they’re just being friendly, but the jokes are always stupid and I wonder how they would respond to unfunny jokes about their own work.

That personal complaint aside, there are established gender differences in language use. To borrow from a review of a review:

Recently, Mulac et al. (2001) summarized the findings of more than 30 empirical studies and reported relatively unambiguous gender effects for 16 language features. According to this, typical male language features include references to quantity, judgmental adjectives (e.g., good, dumb), elliptical sentences (“Great picture.”), directives (“Write that down.”), and “I” references. Typical female language features among others comprise intensive adverbs (e.g., really, so), references to emotions, uncertainty verbs (seems to, maybe), negations (e.g., not, never), and hedges. (Pennebaker et al., 2003).

I do not think any of these differences are insurmountable. For the most part, we tend to do ok.

@nikipedia, I’m menopausal and recently, it really seems I’ve forgotten where I put my memory. I’m not joking either and don’t want to come across like I’m making jokes about your work. I’m very impressed with your career and your mind. Enjoy it while you can young lady.

I read @rebbel‘s question and instantly thought of skits for a sitcom. I think they were funny, but I can’t remember.

@nikipedia Interesting, but what about the nuances between the Thinking, Sensing, Judging and Intuitive types I wonder? I know in my vast research that only 1% of women have my personality type and the implications of social oppression certainly influence women with my personality style. I have been told many times that I “intimidate” men because I don’t play the cutsey little coy seductive trip and I am not given to irrational displays of emotion.

Thinking women often go against the norm and are like Salmon swimming upstream in a sea of female feelers. lol

Don’t get me wrong, I FEEL, I “think” I am very in touch with my feelings but they don’t rule my pragmatic side. So, in many ways I am more like a man. I used to tell my ex husband that I was more of a woman than he could handle and more of a man than he’d ever be. Harsh, yes, true, absolutely! lol

There are none, only different personality types. These differences only exist to begin with because people of each gender are brainwashed from birth on up to behave in a politically correct way. Of course most people comply because very few people want to stand out in a negative light, the negative light that certain behaviors deemed as unacceptable for each gender bring.

@Trillian Yes, they do, if they are manipulated. Correlations are not always accurate, etc. “Statistics” are only as honest as the people who make them up. And even the honest ones are not necessarily good cause and effect pictures.

”& just what does he mean by that?”
Sorry about that, the wife just answ…........owwwww!! ;¬}

@nikipedia Very interesting work. Could you tell us more about it without totally derailing this thread? A link perhaps?

@Nimis, here’s a paper I published last year. I’d be happy to give you a less technical summary or answer any questions about it.