Women speak 20,000 words a day and men only 7,000
| Women speak 20,000 words a day and men only 7,000 | |
|---|---|
| FALSE | |
| "Women talk far more than men, using about 20,000 words a day compared with about 7,000 for men." | |
| Domain | Culture, Religion & Society |
| Tactic | Fabrication Statistical & Evidentiary Distortion |
| Era | Current |
| First seen | 1990s |
| Origin | Self-help and relationship books from the 1990s onward, including Louann Brizendine's 2006 bestseller The Female Brain, which repeated the figures before later editions removed them |
| Last reviewed | 2026-10-27 |
| Further reading: books on Culture, Religion & Society | |
The claim that women speak 20,000 words a day and men only 7,000 has been repeated in books, newspapers and talks for decades. It reinforces a common stereotype that women are more talkative than men. Linguist Mark Liberman traced the figures and found that they did not come from any study. In 2007, researchers led by Matthias Mehl published a study in Science that recorded the daily conversations of nearly 400 university students and found that women and men spoke a similar number of words, about 16,000 a day, with large individual differences within each sex.
What the evidence shows
- No source. Liberman, of the University of Pennsylvania, investigated the citations for the figures and found that they led to other popular books rather than research. Different sources gave different numbers.
- The Mehl study. Using small recording devices that sampled students' speech throughout the day, Mehl and colleagues estimated that women spoke about 16,215 words a day and men about 15,669, a difference that was not statistically significant.
- Individual variation. The most talkative and least talkative participants in the study were both men, showing that differences between individuals were much larger than between sexes.
- Correction. Brizendine said the figure would be removed from future editions of The Female Brain.
- Context. Other research suggests that how much people talk depends on context, such as whether they are in a public or private setting and their role in a conversation.
Why it persists
The claim confirms a familiar stereotype and is often used in humor and relationship advice. Precise numbers make it sound scientific.
Lessons for readers
- Precise statistics may have no source.
- Popular books may cite each other rather than research.
- Differences within groups are often larger than differences between them.
- Claims that confirm stereotypes deserve extra checking.
See also
- Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow
- People are left-brained or right-brained learners
- Humans now have shorter attention spans than goldfish
Sources
- Matthias R. Mehl, Simine Vazire, Nairán Ramírez-Esparza, Richard B. Slatcher and James W. Pennebaker, "Are Women Really More Talkative Than Men?," Science 317, no. 5834 (2007).
- Mark Liberman, posts on the gendered word-count claims, Language Log (2006).