LITTLE ROCK — Men might be strong, but they’re definitely not silent.
Turns out guys are quite the talkers. This according to a new study.
“We … took a data dive into the various phone habits of Mars and Venus. We gathered some pretty interesting information about how men and women act - get ready for this - different on the phone. Of course women like to marathon chat on the phone while men’s conversations consist of utilitarian, monosyllabic bursts. Right? Right? Uh … Wrong,” the study states, ever so authoritatively.
OK, so maybe this analysis was released by Marchex, a trendy mobile advertising company and not a serious scientific journal. Still, the research included the dissection of more than 200,000 calls. That’s official and math-ish enough for our purposes.
When comparing telephone behavior, Marchex found men - those same beings we complain won’t communicate with us and frustrate us by not sharing their feelings - actually have a lot to say.
“On average, male callers stayed on the phone for 7 minutes, 23 seconds and women for just 6 minutes, 30 seconds,” according to the study.
Not only do gents rap a lot, they do it rapidly.
“Men spoke more and spoke faster than women,” the study concludes. “The average male caller spoke 236 words per call at 32 words per minute and the average female spoke 227 words per call at a rate of 24 words per minute.”
Suffice it to say the fairer sex is more efficient. Even if we’re perhaps not motivated as early. The study also revealed: “Men tend to make more calls at the beginning of the day whereas females tend to make more calls after lunch.” (In other words, if you’ve been waiting all day long for that guy to call and ask you out, it’s not going to happen. But console yourself with calls to gal friends - they’re available and ready to chat.)
Wait, how exactly does Marchex know all this? How did it obtain this information? Have its employees been creepily listening in on our calls without consent? To borrow their phrasing, that’s so “Uh …Wrong!”
No, the study specifies these were business calls (ah, so that’s why recordings advise us our calls might be monitored or recorded) to places like auto repair shops and landscaping services and pest control businesses.
So it’s not that men don’t talk. They would just prefer to talk to the mechanic, the gardener and the bug man.
Well, maybe not the bug man.
Marchex’s research reveals it’s women making 65 percent of calls concerning insects. Which means men clearly aren’t dealing with them (read: squashing) properly!
Revisiting our first statement: men might not be so strong either.
Do the talking, e-mail: [email protected] What’s in a Dame is a weekly report from the woman ’hood.
Style, Pages 23 on 02/19/2013