Are Women Really (Not) More Talkative Than Men? A Registered Report of Binary Gender Similarities/Differences in Daily Word Use

CA Tidwell; AF Danvers; VA Pfeifer; DB Abel; E Alisic; A Beer; SJ Bierstetel; KL Bollich-Ziegler; M Bruni; WR Calabrese; C Chiarello; B Demiray; S Dimidjian; KL Fingerman; M Haas; DM Kaplan; YK Kim; G Knezevic; LB Lazarevic; M Luo; A Macbeth; JH Manson; JS Mascaro; C Metcalf; KS Minor; S Moseley; AJ Polsinelli; CL Raison; JK Rilling; ML Robbins; D Sbarra; RB Slatcher; J Sun; M Vasileva; S Vazire; MR Mehl

Journal article

Are Women Really (Not) More Talkative Than Men? A Registered Report of Binary Gender Similarities/Differences in Daily Word Use

CA Tidwell, AF Danvers, VA Pfeifer, DB Abel, E Alisic, A Beer, SJ Bierstetel, KL Bollich-Ziegler, M Bruni, WR Calabrese, C Chiarello, B Demiray, S Dimidjian, KL Fingerman, M Haas, DM Kaplan, YK Kim, G Knezevic, LB Lazarevic, M Luo Show all

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | Published : 2025

DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000534

Open access

Abstract

Women are widely assumed to be more talkative than men. Challenging this assumption, Mehl et al. (2007) provided empirical evidence that men and women do not differ significantly in their daily word use, speaking about 16,000 words per day (WPD) each. However, concerns were raised that their sample was too small to yield generalizable estimates and too age and context homogeneous to permit inferences beyond college students. This registered report replicated and extended the previous study of binary gender differences in daily word use to address these concerns. Across 2,197 participants (more than five-fold the original sample size), pooled over 22 samples (631,030 ambient audio recordings)..

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