In 2007, University of Arizona researchers called it a draw: men and women speak about the same number of words per day. But, a new, larger, more diverse follow-up study suggests that women may be the chattier gender, but only during a certain period of life: midlife. The work is published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Researchers found that women between the ages of 25 and 65—the life stages of early and middle adulthood—spoke on average about 3,000 more words per day than their male counterparts, or more than 20% more words per day. Significant gender differences did NOT appear in the study’s other age groups: adolescence (ages 10 to 17), emerging adulthood (ages 18 to 24) and older adulthood (65 and up).
Of course, these are averages as the study’s least talkative person—a man—spoke an estimated 100 words a day, while the most verbose participant—also male—spoke more than 120,000 (the average was 16,000 words per day in 2007 which has dropped to 13,000 now, probably because we’re on online more than in the past).
How many words do you speak a day? If you’re sleeping 8 hours a day, that means the average person is speaking more than 800 words per hour. Given that we continuously speak about 125-150 words per minute, this means we’re only speaking about 10% of our waking time per day.
Tell that to your spouse!
-Chip