Two Key Studies of Gender & Communication (DP IB Psychology)

Key study one: Tannen (1990)

Aim:  To look for communication differences in male-female couples in intimate relationships

Participants: Couples from the USA who were currently in an intimate relationship

Procedure:

• Tannen carried out a series of recorded observations of each couple 

• These conversations were analysed to identify patterns of speech that showed differences in linguistic style

Results:

Tannen identified a range of gender differences in language, some of which are as follows:

• Men interrupt more than women and they expect to be interrupted themselves 

• Women use a much more reciprocal style of conversation with turn-taking and conversational rules applying

• Men use conversation to establish their status and independence; women use conversation to establish intimacy and connectedness between people.

• A man doesn’t always like it when a woman is empathetic towards him, for example:

  • “Yes, I’ve felt like that too” in response to his feelings -  he may think that she is ‘intruding’ upon his feelings, rendering them ‘just like hers’ and therefore not special or unique to him

  • Women may be baffled by this response as they may have shown empathy in order to understand, to communicate that negative feelings are permissible and that we all feel bad sometimes

• Women do not appreciate men coming up with practical solutions to their distress or low mood, whereas a man may be oriented towards finding something he can do to help his female partner practically:

  • Women prefer men to listen to them when they are upset or unhappy about something

  • A man may try to find a pragmatic solution to her problem, leading the woman to think that he has missed the point, which is that she needs him to empathise, rather than try to find a way of solving the problem.

• When women say ‘sorry’ they tend to use it as a way to express empathy:

  • ‘I’m so sorry you feel bad/that this happened to you’ 

  • A man may hear ‘sorry’ as an apology, which he may think is a sign of weakness and so may avoid saying it

• Women tend to use more language tags (really? uh-huh, right, no kidding?):

  • These tags serve as support to the main speaker, encouraging them in what they are saying and indicating that the communication lines are still open (Tannen calls this ‘overlapping speech’)

  • Women tend to be more inclusive, asking the other person’s opinion more than men do.

Conclusion: Men and women use language differently and for different purposes

Evaluation of Tannen (1990)

Strengths

• The use of rich qualitative data gives this research depth and insight, being high in explanatory power:

  • Explanatory power means that the research can highlight why communication may be different depending on gender as well as what those differences consist of

• The findings could be applied to therapeutic settings such as marriage counselling

  • Being able to apply findings is a type of external validity

 Limitations

• It is possible that some of the participants may have succumbed to the observer effect, giving responses that were self-conscious or contrived in some way:

  • The observer effect can lower the validity of the findings

• The findings are broad and cannot account for individual differences in communication between males and females, for example:

  • Some women may interrupt others in conversation frequently

  • Some men are able to empathise

  • Some women may not use ‘sorry’ as a way of expressing empathy

Key study two: Cameron (2007)

Aim: To challenge the view that there are distinct gender differences in communication

Procedure: 

• A meta-analysis of 56 pieces of research into language and gender

• The studies analysed in the meta-analysis all used recorded conversations between male and female pairs

Results:

• Quantitative data in the form of effect sizes for variables linking gender to talkativeness, self-disclosure and interruption found the following:

  • A tiny effect size for talkativeness of 0.11 for women talking more than men in conversations

  • An almost zero effect size (0.02) for verbal reasoning i.e. no real gender difference

  • Men did not interrupt as much as previous research indicated (0.15 – 0.33 effect size)

  • Women’s self-disclosure was not much higher than men’s at 0.18 effect size

  • Men were only marginally (0.11) more assertive in their speech than women

Conclusion: Gender differences in language have been exaggerated

Evaluation of Cameron (2007)

Strengths

• This research is in the form of a meta-analysis which means that the data used is objective and can include very large samples, thus increasing the reliability of the findings

• Cameron’s findings help to explode some gender stereotypes, for example:

  • Men are not necessarily dominant and women are not necessarily submissive

  • There is more common ground between genders than previous research has indicated

Limitations 

• Secondary data is not subject to the same levels of control as is primary data:

  • Each study within the meta-analysis was conducted by other researchers, some of whom may have ‘cut corners’ as it were

• Conversational style is highly subjective which makes it difficult to operationalise and measure which ultimately lowers the reliability of any quantitative research into the topic