MRCApplied Psychology Unit

It is a widely held belief that women talk more than men; but experimental evidence has suggested that this belief is mistaken. The present study investigated whether listener bias contributes to this mistake. Dialogues were recorded in mixed-sex and single-sex versions, and male and female listeners judged the proportions of talk contributed to the dialogues by each participant. Female contributions to mixed-sex dialogues were rated as greater than male con-tributions by both male and female listeners. Female contributions were more likely to be overestimated when they were speaking a dialogue part perceived as probably female than when they were speaking a dialogue part perceived as probably male. It is suggested that the misesti-mates are due to a complex of factors that may involve both perceptual effects such as misjudg-ment of rates of speech and sociological effects such as attitudes to social roles and perception of power relations. According to proverbial wisdom, women talk more than men. The English proverb "Women's tongues are like lambs ' tails- never still " has parallels in many cultures (Swacker, 1975). But experimental evidence does not justif