The Great Lip Off!

You know the old “women are motor mouths” stereotype - men have to contend with their onslaught of words while contributing the bare minimum, themselves.

Debunked!

In a study led by Matthias R. Mehl, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, men were found to hurl around nearly as many words.

The researchers placed microphones on 396 college students for periods ranging from two to 10 days, sampled their conversations and calculated how many words they used in the course of a day.

The Score: Women - 16,215
Men - 15,669

The difference? 546 words. “Not statistically significant,” say the researchers.

The researchers launched their study after a magazine article stated that women use an average of 20,000 words per day compared with 7,000 for men. Those numbers seemed way out of line, so they set out to prove this as being nothing more than an urban legend.

Now if someone could just prove that we’re not such lousy drivers. Um, not by watching me, of course.

Make each word count!
~Joi