6 ms·
Why men don't listen
- tokenadult 17y agoGood examples of how to give a close reading to the references in a popular book supposedly about new scientific findings.
- _delirium 17y agoThe results are actually pretty shocking to me. I'm used to pop-science works stretching their references, glossing over caveats, extrapolating too much, etc., but some of the references here look blatantly fraudulent. Citing a study that looked at gender-related hearing differences of stroke victims in their 50s and 60s as evidence that typical teenagers have gender differences in hearing is hard to interpret as merely a mistake or exaggeration, unless the author made an error in their citation manager and put the completely wrong study down.
- pbhjpbhj 17y agoIs it "because women talk too much"? No, I've not read the link yet.
- archgoon 17y agoNo. That false claim (promoted by the same author who is taken down in this article) was covered in other Language Log articles. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003420.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003420.h... http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/003607.html http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/003607.html And a summary of articles in Language Log about related issues on supposed sex-linked differences. http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/003586.html http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/003586.html
- george_morgan 17y agoTL;DL
- raganwald 17y agoI normally dislike "tl;dr," but I do believe this is the one place where it is more than appropriate. Bravo.
- george_morgan 17y agoWell, it was a “too long, didn’t listen” but I’m not sure anyone read. Alas.
- doki_pen 17y agoSkip to the last few paragraphs and the comments, then if it seems interesting read the rest.
- startuprules 17y agoThe author meanders through several pointless studies and fails to answer his own blog post. Kind of like when women talk about anything (that's why men don't listen).
- telemachos 17y agoThe post is very long. I hesitated before submitting it, and then I considered posting a half-apology/explanation of what I found worthwhile there. (Then I remembered that that's discouraged in the FAQ.) Overall, I think it's worth the read, but that's not for me to decide. No matter what else is true, your comment about women is completely useless and unhelpful. If it's meant to be a joke, it's not funny. If it's meant to be serious, it's just depressing. (It's also irrelevant, since the author of the post is male.)
- archgoon 17y agoThis is because he's not interested in answering the question. His main point, which people familiar with Language Log know (and thus the assumed target audience), is that the book The Male Brain takes common pop wisdom "Men Don't Listen", and proposes ad-hoc "scientific explanations for it". The main point of this article, which is understood by readers, is to show that there is no real scientific basis for the claim "Why Men Don't Listen", despite what "The Male Brain" claims. This means going through referenced papers in The Male Brain (shown as red quotes) and showing that they do not, in fact, show what Brizendine claims. So no, this article will disappoint you if you think you'll get an 'scientific' answer to the question.
- Dellort 17y agoSometimes "won't listen" is confused with "won't agree with me on it even though I bring it up more than once."
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- dgabriel 17y agoThis phenomenon is not limited to women.
- Dellort 17y agoI wonder why you felt the need to state that; I did not imply otherwise.
- calcnerd256 17y agoPerhaps it was to help others who won't understand that you did not imply otherwise.
- Dellort 17y agoAt first I suspected that this person may have felt offended by this for some weird reason, but now it seems obvious to me that you are most likely correct in your assessment. Rest assured I have only honorable intentions in noting my little observation here. Sometimes I guess it can be easy to misinterpret information by adding more information to said information that may or may not come from past experiences or from somewhere else entirely; Perhaps context?
- joe_the_user 17y agoYes, in the context of the article talking about "men not listen", the clarification was useful.
- doki_pen 17y agoPerhaps because the article has the title "why _men_ don't listen".
- albertsun 17y agoReminds me of this blog post by Felix Salmon http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/04/01/economics-without-mathematics/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/04/01/economics-w... where he concedes that most economic journalists, himself included, don't really read economic papers because they can't be bothered to follow the math. That means they can get snowed by unwarranted assertions in the more plainly written introduction and conclusion and cite the paper/study as saying something it doesn't.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- d0mine 17y agoContrary to our expectations, we did not find any significant differences in the ability of healthy men and women to comprehend emotional intonation. </quote>
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- pvg 17y agoYou argument is going to be you don't read, as well as you don't listen?
- keefe 17y agoI think the truth is far more terrifying than the article implies. I think mostly, people don't communicate with each other at all, regardless of sex. In relationships especially, it seems people often come to take each other for granted.
- joe_the_user 17y agoThe article had rather little to do with men or women not listening. Rather, it was a summary of the pseudo-science commonly evoked to justify the stereotype "men don't listen".
- Mz 17y agoI agree. My former marriage was a prime example of that: Two intelligent, literate, articulate people who spent years arguing with each other on the false assumption that because we both spoke American English more proficiently than average, we fully understood each other. So not.
- mainguy 17y agoActually an interestingly good read about the dangers of explanatory neurophilia (http://bit.ly/p6fi8 http://bit.ly/p6fi8). After the second citation I knew something was amiss really enjoyed the second and third levels of links. Of course, everyone knows men don't listen to women because men's hearing has a trough at the exact frequency of women's speech. This had an evolutionary advantage because men could focus on hunting and defending the tribe without distraction while women used communication to better forage. This division of responsibility gave our predecessors a huge advantage over other predators and herd foragers. It also explains why most human societies tend to prefer specialization over generalization. I'm not going to go to the trouble to cite this, but if I had enough free time I'm sure I could bend some stuff out of context and get a bunch of folks to believe me.
- vishaldpatel 17y agoI don't need to know why I don't listen! =P
- yason 17y agoFrom what I've learned, women use talking to clear out their mind, to reach a conclusion whereas men like to talk only after they're reached a conclusion. This also sets expectations in men and guides how men respond to women. When a person is talking, men expect him to have a point and get there quick. This won't happen when a man is listening to a woman because women talk to find out themselves if there's a point at all. You can guess this can be totally boring for the man if he's stuck with the idea of just waiting and waiting and waiting for the woman to get the point. Soon the man will just learn that the woman's talk never reaches his expectations and stops listening. It's not about physical hearing, it's about mentally filtering out anything she says. Neither approach to talking is wrong, they're just very different. I've made it a point for myself to listen to my wife because I've seen how tremendously important it is for her. I don't expect her to get to a point and I'm not waiting for an interesting issue to be revealed in the end that I can then solve for her. I just listen, nod, make short comments, and what I expect from the discussion is her feeling better instead of a point getting delivered.
- kristiandupont 17y agoThis is my observation too, at least for some women (and some men too, I am sure). However, I find it difficult to keep listening if I don't feel there is a point. How do you manage not to zone out?
- bartl 17y agoAnd that may well be the reason why men zone out. I know I do.
- yason 17y agoI guess it's called love. I wouldn't want to listen to just any woman but I do want to listen to my wife. It helps to recognize that it's important to her: I can see her relaxing when talking and it feels good to help her. I also reserve the right to not listen to her: in that case I'll just tell her that now is not a good time — I can't handle it now but I'll listen to her later. Perhaps thanks to this, I can indeed handle her most of the time. Listening is easier when I know beforehand that her train of thought just wanders around and won't probably lead to any conclusion as I would understand an ending. Thus, I've learned to not expect one. My mind does drop off the track sometimes but I know I'll soon get back to listening again. Her words are sketches so it doesn't matter if I miss some as long as I hear most. I can still keep the key things in my head and she doesn't question whether I can recite what I've heard either. Sometimes I can't do better than just half-listen: in that case I can sometimes keep my cool and make her happy, sometimes she will notice and ask me to focus more on her. Sometimes I can't, sometimes I can. I don't think my wife particularly enjoys when I'm explaining to her some cool technical thing or praise something I did to my car either. She's not too interested in it and she doesn't know much of what I'm talking about. But if I want to tell her about those she always listens, up to my point and often beyond. I'll rather live fifty years with her and try to not zone out while she's talking than live fifty years alone and try to not zone out while nobody's talking.
- balding_n_tired 17y agoIs the message, Let not your mesage resemble white noise?