Gender Differences in Communication

Editor's Note: This is a review of the research on gender and communication that
was prepared by Dr. Beth Vanfossen for ITROW's Women and Expression
Conference. (To obtain the full report, including an annotated bibliography, see the
Order Form.)

Contents

 Do men and women differ in their communication experiences?

 Who talks the most?

 Who interrupts?

 What about gender patterns in formal group meetings?

 What about gender patterns in informal group meetings?

 Is there a "women's language" connoting uncertainty and deference?

 Does it matter?

 What are some of the ways women are affected by these patterns?

 Are gender differences in communication patterns related to power?

 Some strategies, solutions and practical ideas

Do men and women differ in their communication experiences?

Before we look at the differences, we should realize that:

 There is enormous diversity in communication style and practices within each gender group.
 Most women and many men have at their disposal a variety of conversational and speech
skills, any one of which they may draw upon, depending on the situation, their purposes,
the roles they are playing, and the context.

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Who talks the most?

 In mixed-gender groups, at public gatherings, and in many informal conversations, men

spend more time talking than do women.
 For example, in one experiment, the men with expertise talked longer than the women with
expertise.
 Men initiate more interaction than do women.

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Who interrupts?
  Men are more likely than women to interrupt the speaking of other people.
 A study of faculty meetings revealed that women are more likely than men to be
interrupted.
 Some of the interruptions that women experience come from other women. (Women, when
they do interrupt, are more likely to interrupt other women than they are to interrupt men,
according to two studies.)
 Women are more likely than men to allow an interruption of their talk to be successful (they
do not resist the interruption as much as men do).

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What about gender patterns in formal group meetings?

 In meetings, men gain the "floor" more often, and keep the floor for longer periods of time,
regardless of their status in the organization.
 In professional conferences, women take a less active part in responding to papers.
 When women do ask a question, they take less time in asking it than do men. In addition,
they employ much less prequestion predication, they are less likely to ask multiple
questions, and they are more likely than men to phrase their question in personal terms.

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What are the gender patterns in informal group meetings?

 When the floor is an informal, collaborative venture, women display a fuller range of
language ability. Here, in the kind of conversation where women excel, people jointly build
an idea, operate on the same wavelengths, and have deep conversational overlaps.

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Is there a "women's language" connoting uncertainty and deference?

 The use of tag questions ("It's really cold in here, isn't it?"), disclaimers ("I may be wrong,
but . . ."), and question statements ("won't you close the door?") all decrease the perceived
assertiveness of speech. However, research has not confirmed that women and men differ
in the frequency of their use of these forms.
 Raters perceive those who use a deferential language style (super polite language, hedges,
and hesitations) as having less power but more personal warmth.

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Does it matter?

 Those who talk more are more likely to be perceived as dominant and controlling of the
conversation.
 Those who talk the most in decision-making groups also tend to become the leaders.
Especially important are "task leadership behaviors," such as asking questions, helping to
set up structures and procedures for the groups, giving information and opinions, and
identifying and solving problems.
 Interrupters are perceived as more successful and driving, but less socially acceptable,
reliable, and companionable than the interrupted speaker.
 In a study of trial witnesses in a superior court, undergraduate student observers saw both
female and male witnesses who use powerful language as being more competent,
intelligent, and trustworthy than those who use powerless language.

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What are some of the ways women are affected by these patterns?

 When someone is interrupted often or her comments are ignored, she may come to believe
that what she has to say must not be important.
 Women are less likely than men to have confidence in their ability to make persuasive
arguments.
 Many women feel inhibited in formal, mixed-gender groups.
 Some women participate in creating their own passive participation -- by allowing
interruptions, by not taking advantage of natural pauses in the conversation, or by asking
questions without explaining the context out of which the question emerged.
 Some women, when they do gain the "floor," talk too fast as though they know they are
about to be interrupted.

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Are gender differences in communication patterns related to power?

 When people are strangers, they expect less competence from women than from men.
 But if women are known to have prior experience or expertise related to the task, or if
women are assigned leadership roles, then women show greatly increased verbal behaviors
in mixed-sex groups.
 A study of witnesses in a superior court found that educated professionals who have high
social status were less likely to use "powerless language," regardless of gender.
 Thus, differences are linked to power, and are context-specific. Differences are socially
created and therefore may be socially altered.
 Other studies have found that talking time is related both to gender (because men spend
more time talking than women) and to organizational power (because the more powerful
spend more time talking than the less powerful).

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Is assertiveness in women viewed negatively by others?

 In several carefully-controlled studies using undergraduate students, assertive behavior

exhibited by females was evaluated as positively as the same behavior exhibited by males
(based on a study of employers who evaluated audiotapes showing direct assertive,
empathetic assertiveness, and self-effacing assertive behaviors). The least-valued behavior
is the self-effacing assertive.
 Subordinates prefer a supervisor to balance a task-orientated style with a relationship-
oriented style.
 Research further has suggested that the adoption of task behaviors (a focus on getting
things done) enhances a female's adaptability in the organization (but the adoption of
relationship behaviors -- focusing on the relationships among people -- proves problematic
for males). "The healthiest and best-liked individuals, male or female, were assertive,
decisive, and intellectual, rather than nurturing, responsive and emotional"(Fitzpatrick).
Therefore, women may want to focus on task- and impression-management goals in their
interactions.

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Some strategies, solutions, and practical ideas:

There are three competing goals every time we communicate:

1. A task goal -- get the job done.
2. A relational goal -- do not do unnecessary damage to the relationships between you and
others by your message.
 3. An identity management goal -- make your communication project the image that you
want.

Women should avoid using tag questions (That's an interesting idea, isn't it?") or disclaimers ("I
could be mistaken, but . . ."; "This may sound strange but . . .").

To gain the floor in discussion, women can creatively use strategic questioning. The careful use of
questions in a conversation controls when a topic is changed and when a topic is extended and
discussed at greater length.

Women probably should not adopt male behavior by greatly increasing their rate of interrupting
others. Once a woman has the floor, she should resist giving it to another speaker until she has
completed her points ("Just a moment, I haven't finished").

Instead of asking open-ended questions such as, "How is the project going?," ask closed questions
such as "when can we expect the report of the data structures?"

Women should not undercut what they are saying with their nonverbal actions. They should adopt
a slightly more relaxed posture, do less frequent smiling (and smile only when there is something
to smile about), and less frequent nodding, head tilting and dropping of eyes in response to
another's gaze. They should avoid using the intonation of a question (raising the voice at the end
of a sentence rather than lowering it) when making a declarative statement.

The statements below are adapted from The Androgynous Manager, by Alice G. Sargent, Amacom,
1981:

 Learn to state exactly what you want and face the risk of being cut down or wrong,
especially at meetings. This is not a "safe" position, but it is an honest one. Be concerned
more about stating your own position than about how the other person is reacting to you.
 State your own needs and do not back down even if the immediate response is not
acceptance.
 Stop self-limiting behaviors, such as allowing interruptions or laughing after making a
serious statement.
 Practice taking risks and overcoming fear.
 Learn to focus on a task and regard it as at least as important as the relationship among the
people doing the task.
 Stop turning anger and blame inward. Stop making negative statements about yourself.
Make positive statements.
 Stop feeling comfortable with being a victim and suffering.
 Deal differently with women: Develop an "old girl" network, working more closely with other
women.
 Build a sense of community among women instead of saying "I did it, why can't she?"
 Support other women to the same degree or more than women support men.

Some of these innate, largely biological differences seem to be:

High-Testosterone People Low-Testosterone People

("Male brains") prefer: ("Female brains") prefer:

_ things _ people
_ facts, reason, and logic _ feelings, senses, and
meaning
_ power / rank / status
_ relationships
_ competing / achieving
_ harmony / relating
 _ winning
_ teams
_ analyzing / figuring out
_ assertion / aggression
_ reports / information
_ intellectual understanding
_ sex (intercourse /
orgasm)
_ companionship / doing
_ teaching / leading
_ being focused / specific /
"logical"
_ order / rules / structure
_ thinking
_ how things work
_ _
_ sharing
_ groups
_ intuiting / "knowing"
_ co-operation, mutuality
_ rapports / bonding
_ empathizing
_ love / intimacy
_ closeness / being
_ nurturing / growing
_ being "wide-angle" /
organic / wholistic
_ organic, fluid patterns
_ feeling / experiencing
_ personal and social
impacts

You and your partner's respective profiles and rankings of these factors
shape how you behave (communicate and react) with each other. How would
you rank-order yourself and your key communication partners (including kids)
on these attributes? How do your preference-patterns (above) affect your
internal (thinking) and social-communication

A key implication here is - if your partner has a different profile of these

priorities than you do, it's useless and disrespectful to criticize or try to
change them. Attempting to do so is like demanding that s/he change her or
his fingerprints. What do you think?

See "You Just Don't Understand - Women and Men in Conversation"

(1990 Ballentine paperback, by linguist Deborah Tannen, Ph.D.) for more
interesting perspective on male/female communication traits and differences.

+++

Becoming of these gender-differences and how they affect your

stepfamily- communications is part of the of your The goals of this
vital pre-re/marriage project are for you and your partner to (a) learn and
adapt the to your individual communication (b) harmonize them over
time, and (c) become fluent together in using the skills to improve everyone
getting more of their met, in a win-win (mutual respectful) way.

They just can't help it

What kind of brain do you have? There really are big differences between the male and female brain, says
Simon Baron-Cohen. And they could help explain conditions such as autism
Do you have a male or female brain? Take the test

Thursday April 17, 2003

The Guardian

Are there essential differences between the male and female brain? My theory is that the female brain is
predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and that the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for
understanding and building systems. I call it the empathising-systemising (E-S) theory.

Empathising is the drive to identify another person's emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with
an appropriate emotion. The empathiser intuitively figures out how people are feeling, and how to treat
people with care and sensitivity. Systemising is the drive to analyse and explore a system, to extract
underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a system; and the drive to construct systems. The
systemiser intuitively figures out how things work, or what the underlying rules are controlling a system.
Systems can be as varied as a pond, a vehicle, a computer, a maths equation, or even an army unit. They
all operate on inputs and deliver outputs, using rules.

According to this theory, a person (whether male or female) has a particular "brain type". There are three
common brain types: for some individuals, empathising is stronger than systemising. This is called the
female brain, or a brain of type E. For other individuals, systemising is stronger than empathising. This is
called the male brain, or a brain of type S. Yet other individuals are equally strong in their systemising and
empathising. This is called the "balanced brain", or a brain of type B. There are now tests you can take to
see which type (E, S, or B) you are. Not which type you'd like to be, but which you actually are.

A key feature of this theory is that your sex cannot tell you which type of brain you have. Not all men
have the male brain, and not all women have the female brain. The central claim of this new theory is only
that on average, more males than females have a brain of type S, and more females than males have a
brain of type E.

So are females better at empathising? This theory rings true at an anecdotal level. For example, we've
always known that people choose different things to read in the newsagent on the railway platform or in
the airport departure lounge. Women are more likely to go to the magazine rack featuring fashion,
romance, beauty, intimacy, emotional problems and agony-aunts, counselling, relationship advice, and
parenting. Men are more likely to go to a magazine rack featuring computers, cars, boats, photogra phy,
DIY, sport, hi-fi, action, guns, tools, and the outdoors.

And we all have anecdotal impressions about typical hobbies for men and women. Men are more likely to
spend hours happily engaged in car or motorbike maintenance, light aircraft piloting, sailing, bird- or
trainspotting, mathematics, tweaking their sound systems, computer games and programming. Women
are more likely to spend hours happily engaged in coffee mornings or pot-luck suppers, advising friends
on relationship problems, or caring for friends, neighbours, or pets.

But the E-S theory goes beyond such anecdotal evidence to pull together the scientific evidence, and
investigate the origins of these differences.

The evidence for a female advantage in empathising comes from many different directions. For example,
studies show that when children play together with a little movie player that has only one eye-piece, boys
tend to get more of their fair share of looking down the eye piece. They just shoulder the girls out of the
way. Less empathy, more self-centred. Or if you leave out a bunch of those big plastic cars that kids can
ride on, what you see is that more little boys play the "ramming" game. They deliberately drive the
vehicle into another child. The little girls ride around more carefully, avoiding the other children more
often. This suggests the girls are being more sensitive to others.

Baby girls, as young as 12 months old, respond more empathically to the distress of other people,
showing greater concern through more sad looks, sympathetic vocalisations and comforting. This echoes
what you find in adulthood: more women report frequently sharing the emotional distress of their friends.
Women also spend more time comforting people.
When asked to judge when someone might have said something potentially hurtful, girls score higher from
at least seven years old. Women are also more sensitive to facial expressions. They are better at decoding
non-verbal communication, picking up subtle nuances from tone of voice or facial expression, or judging a
person's character.

There is also a sex difference in aggression. Males tend to show far more "direct" aggression such as
pushing, hitting and punching. Females tend to show more "indirect" (or "relational", covert) aggression.
This includes gossip, exclusion, and bitchy remarks. It could be said that to punch someone in the face or
to wound them physically requires an even lower level of empathy than a verbal snipe.

Two other ways to reveal a person's empathising skill are to see how they (as a newcomer) join a group of
strangers, and to see how they (as a host) react to a new person joining their group. This has been
cleverly investigated in children by introducing a new boy or girl to a group who are already playing
together. If the newcomer is female, she is more likely to stand and watch for a while, to check out what's
going on, and then try to fit in with the ongoing activity. This usually leads to the newcomer being readily
accepted into the group. If the newcomer is a boy, he is more likely to hijack the game by trying to
change it, directing everyone's attention on to him. And even by the age of six, girls are better at being a
host. They are more attentive to the newcomer. Boys often just ignore the newcomer's attempt to join in.
They are more likely to carry on with what they were already doing.

How early are such sex differences in empathy evident? Certainly, by 12 months , girls make more eye
contact than boys. But a new study carried out in my lab at Cambridge University shows that at birth, girls
look longer at a face, and boys look longer at a suspended mechanical mobile. Furthermore, the
Cambridge team found that how much eye contact children make is in part determined by a biological
factor: prenatal testosterone. This has been demonstrated by measuring this hormone in amniotic fluid.

All this adds up to a large amount of evidence for a female advantage in empathising, with at least some
biological determinants. What about the claimed male advantage in systemising?

Boys, from toddlerhood onwards, are more interested in cars, trucks, planes, guns and swords, building
blocks, constructional toys, and mechanical toys - systems. They seem to love putting things together, to
build toy towers or towns or vehicles. Boys also enjoy playing with toys that have clear functions, buttons
to press, things that will light up, or devices that will cause another object to move.

You see the same sort of pattern in the adult workplace. Some occupations are almost entirely male.
Think of metal-working, weapon-making, crafting musical instruments, or the construction industries, such
as boat-building. The focus of these occupations is on constructing systems. Professions such as maths,
physics, and engineering, which require high sys temising, are also largely male-chosen disciplines.

Some psychological tests also show the male advantage in systemising. For example, in the mental
rotation test, you're shown two shapes, and asked if one is a rotation or a mirror image of the other.
Males are quicker and more accurate on this test. Reading maps has been used as another test of
systemising. Men can learn a route in fewer trials, just from looking at a map, correctly recalling more
details about direction and distance. If you ask boys to make a map of an area that they have only visited
once, their maps have a more accurate layout of the features in the environment, eg, showing which
landmark is south-east of another.

If you ask people to put together a 3D mechanical apparatus in an assembly task, on average, men score
higher. Boys are also better at constructing block buildings from 2D blueprints. These are constructional
systems. And in Nick Hornby's novel, High Fidelity, the male protagonist is obsessed with his record
collection, and works in a second-hand record shop catering for (almost all male) customers searching for
that one missing item in their collections of music. Collections (of albums, or anything else) are often
highly systematic in nature.

The male preference for focusing on systems again is evident very early. Our Cambridge study found that
at one year old, little boys showed a stronger preference to watch a film of cars (mechanical systems),
than a film of a person's face (with a lot of emotional expression). Little girls showed the opposite
preference. And at one day old, little boys look for longer at a mechanical mobile.

We, of course, know that with time, culture and socialisation do play a role in determining a male brain
(stronger interest in systems) or female brain (stronger interest in empathy). But these studies strongly
suggest that biology also partly determines this.

Some of the most convincing evidence for biological causes comes from studies of the effects of
hormones. There was a time when women were prescribed a synthetic female hormone
(diethylstilbestrol), in an attempt to prevent repeated spontaneous miscarriages. Boys born to such
women are likely to show more female-typical, empathising behaviours, such as caring for dolls. And if a
female rat is injected at birth with testosterone, she shows faster, more accurate maze learning,
compared with a female rat who has not been given such an injection.

Some important lessons have been learnt from studies of clinical conditions. Male babies born with IHH
(idiopathic hypogonadotrophic hypogonadism) have very small testes (and therefore low levels of
testosterone) and they are worse at spatial aspects of systemising, relative to normal males. Other male
babies born with androgen insensitivity (AI) syndrome (testosterone is an androgen) are also worse at
systemising. Compare these with female babies born with CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia), who have
high levels of androgens and who have enhanced spatial systemising.

But even if you leave aside these clin ical conditions, there is evidence for the effects of hormones on the
mind in the typical child: our own study found that toddlers who had lower foetal testosterone had higher
levels of eye contact. Presumably eye contact may have something to do with sociability and empathising.
And a group of Canadian researchers found that the higher your prenatal testosterone the better you do
on the mental rotation (systemising) test.

Should a theory like this be a cause of concern? Some people may worry that this is suggesting one sex is
better than the other, but a moment's reflection should allay this fear. The theory is saying that, on
average, males and females differ in what they are drawn to and what they find easy, but that both sexes
have their strengths and their weaknesses. Neither sex is superior overall.

Others may worry that a theory like this stereotypes the sexes. But we need to distinguish stereotyping
from the study of sex differences. The study simply looks at males and females as two groups, and asks
why on average, differences are seen. There is no harm in that, and even some important scientific
advances that can come out of it. Stereotyping, on the other hand, is when a characteristic of a group is
assumed to apply to an individual, and this is potentially discriminating and harmful. The E-S theory does
not stereotype. Rather, it seeks to explain why individuals are typical or atypical for their sex.

What are the potential new insights from a theory like this? It may help us understand the childhood
neurological conditions of autism and Asperger syndrome, which appear to be an extreme of the male
brain. Such individuals may have impairments in empathising alongside normal or even talented
systemising. The theory also predicts the existence of the mirror-image of autism or Asperger syndrome,
namely, the extreme female brain. Science has not even begun to investigate what such people are like,
but we know they must have impairments in systemising, alongside normal or even talented empathising.
Finally, the theory delineates two key dimensions of individual differences - empathising and systemising -
that exist among any group of children, so that parents and educators can become more tolerant of
difference.

Is there an explanation for autism?

I argue that people with autism may have an extreme of the male brain - good at systemising, very bad
at empathising - and that studying autism with E-S theory in mind, can help increase our understanding of
the condition.
Two largest sub-groups of autism are classic autism, and Asperger syndrome. Both share certain features:
a difficulty in developing social relationships; a difficulty in communication; the presence of unusually
strong, narrow interests; and a strong adherence to routines.

They differ in that in classic autism, the person might have an IQ at any point on the scale (even in the
learning disabled range) and the person invariably had a language delay as a toddler. In Asperger
syndrome, the person is always at least average in IQ (and may be well above average), and talked on
time as a toddler. Autism spectrum conditions affect about one child in every 200, with males being far
more likely than to be diagnosed.

What's interesting is that the obsessional interests that people with autism spectrum conditions show
often focus on a system. It may be an intense preoccupation with light switches in the house, or running
water from the taps in different sinks in the house. For their long-suffering parents, these "obsessions"
can be very hard to cope.

But according to the E-S theory the child may simply be focusing on the tiny details in the system - how
fast the water flows when the tap is turned to different angles, or which lights go on when different
switches are in the up or down position - using their intelligence to work out the underlying rules that
govern the system. The characteristic approach they take is to home in on a topic or area of knowledge,
and comb it for every detail, until they feel they've covered most if not all of the information available.
The "obsession" might last weeks, months, or even years. And then typically, they move on to a new area
to master.

Some parents and teachers will indulge the child so that the child can follow their obsessional interests all
the way. And just sometimes, this can lead to great achievement or the development of expertise. Other
parents or teachers - with good reason - feel a need to interrupt the child's obsessional focus. But the E-S
theory sees individuals with autism spectrum conditions as having a learning style that prefers depth over
breadth, and accuracy or exactness over gist.

So much for their strong systemising. What about their impaired empathising? This is the area that is
likely to lead them into trouble, or to leave them disabled. Difficulty empathising translates into a whole
set of hurdles. You might be last person to get the point of a joke, which can leave you feeling like an
outsider. You might end up saying something that another person finds hurtful or offensive, when that
was the last thing you intended. You might misinterpret other people's actions and motives. And you
might just not pick up how others see you, and hence not know how you come across as odd or different.
People's insincerity or subtle emotions may just go straight over your head.

Such difficulties can lead to a child with autism or Asperger syndrome being neglected, or even ostracised
by their peer group. Or worse, teased and bullied. Tragically, such bullying often goes undetected by
teachers and even parents, so that the child suffers in silence at school for years and years. During the
teens, this difficulty in fitting into a peer group can lead the person with Asperger syndrome to become
depressed.

No wonder educators are now urgently waking up to the existence of Asperger syndrome, since if it can be
better recognised, many of these secondary difficulties might be avoided. And the hope is that a better
understanding of such conditions - the extreme male brain - may lead teachers to be more tolerant of the
very different learning style such children possess. If nurtured, systemising is not only a valuable
contribution, but can even result in a refreshingly original way of thinking and seeing the world.

Simon Baron-Cohen is the director of the Autism Research Centre, Cambridge University. His new book,
the Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain, will be published by Penguin on May 1
For more information, visit the National Autistic Society UK website www.nas.org.uk

Talk about this article here

Further reading

Sex and Cognition, Doreen Kimura, MIT Press,1999

Mindblindness: an essay on autism and theory of mind, Simon Baron-Cohen, MIT Press/Bradford Books,
1995

Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences, David C Geary, American Psychological Society,
1998

The Two Sexes: growing up apart, coming together, Eleanor MacCoby Harvard University Press, 1998

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