Do women talk more than men?
女人比男人話多？呵呵呵呵呵

We've all heard the stereotype: Women like to talk. We bounce ideas off each other about everything from career moves to dinner plans. We hash out big decisions through our conversations with one another and work through our emotions with discussion. At least, that's what "they" say. But is any of it actually true? Can we really make such sweeping generalizations about the communication patterns of women versus those of men? The research is surprisingly thin considering the strength of the stereotype: Some studies say yes, women are more talkative than men. Others say there's no pat?tern at all. Still others say men are even bigger chatterboxes.

我們曾聽過不少調(diào)侃女人話多的老話(一千只鴨子什么的)，女人談?wù)摰脑掝}從工作變動到晚餐計劃，可謂多種多樣，女人在做出重大決定之前都會和別人談?wù)劊缓罂从懻摰男那樽鰶Q定。至少，“他們”都是這么說的。那這些都是真的嗎？這樣真的能全面概況男人和女人的交流模式嗎？那可不一定：有些研究說，沒錯，女人就是比男人能說。而別的研究就說，其實并沒有固定的模式。還有研究說男人甚至比女人還要聒噪。

Perhaps all this contradiction comes from the difficulty of studying such a phenomenon. Most of these studies rely on either self-reported data, in which researchers gather information by asking subjects about their past conversational exploits, or observational data, in which researchers watch the interactions directly. But both of these approaches bring with them some hefty limitations. For one thing, our memories are not nearly as good as we like to think they are. Secondly, researchers can only observe so many people at once, meaning large data sets, which offer the most statistical power to detect differences, are hard to come by. Another challenge with direct observation is that subjects may act in a more affiliative manner in front of a researcher.

這種矛盾可能來自于對這一種現(xiàn)象研究的困境。多數(shù)這類研究要么依賴于研究人員詢問調(diào)查對象時，調(diào)查對象對以前交談模式的自我陳述；要么是研究人員直接觀察調(diào)查對象所得的數(shù)據(jù)。但這兩種方法都有很強的限制性。第一，我們的記憶并不像我們認(rèn)為的那樣好。第二，研究人員一次能觀察的人數(shù)量有限，這意味著很難得到大量的可以最大程度上判斷出區(qū)別的數(shù)據(jù)。直接觀察導(dǎo)致的另外一個問題就是，調(diào)查對象在有人觀察他們的時候可能會和平時表現(xiàn)得不一樣。

But a new study from Northeastern professor David Lazer, who researches social net-works and holds joint appoint?ments in the Department of Political Science and the College of Computer and Information Sciences, takes a different approach. Using so-called "sociometers" — wearable devices roughly the size of smartphones that collect real-time data about the user's social interactions — Lazer's team was able to tease out a more accurate picture of the talkative-woman stereotype we're so familiar with — and they found that context plays a large role.

但研究社會關(guān)系網(wǎng)的David Lazer教授的采用不同的方法進(jìn)行了一項新研究并聯(lián)合政治系和計算機信息科學(xué)院召開了會議。用所謂的“社交儀”(sociometers)——這是一種大約有智能手機大小的可穿戴設(shè)備，它能實時收集用戶的社交數(shù)據(jù)——Lazer的團隊能對我們認(rèn)為愛說話的女人調(diào)查得更細(xì)致一些，結(jié)果他們發(fā)現(xiàn)社交環(huán)境在其中扮演了很重要的角色。

The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports and represents one of the first academic papers to use sociometers to address this kind of question. The research team includes Jukka-Pekka Onnela, who previously worked in Lazer's lab and is now at the Harvard School of Public Health, as well as researchers at the MIT Media Labora-tory and the Harvard Kennedy School.

該研究發(fā)表在《科學(xué)報告》上，這也是第一份用社交儀研究這類問題的學(xué)術(shù)研究。這個研究團隊包括之前在Lazer的實驗室工作但現(xiàn)在在哈佛公共健康學(xué)院的Jukka-Pekka Onnela，以及在MIT媒體研究室和哈佛肯尼迪學(xué)院的研究人員。

For their study, the research team provided a group of men and women with sociometers and split them in two different social settings for a total of 12 hours. In the first setting, master's degree candidates were asked to complete an individual project, about which they were free to converse with one another for the duration of a 12-hour day. In the second setting, employees at a call-center in a major U.S. banking firm wore the sociometers during 12 one-hour lunch breaks with no designated task.

在他們的研究中，研究人員給一群男人和女人發(fā)了社交儀，然后把他們分成兩種不同的社會設(shè)定，但總測量時間都是12個小時。在第一組設(shè)定中，研究生候選人在一天中的12個小時可以自由地同人交談。在第二組設(shè)定中，美國一家銀行的呼叫中心職員在12天里面，中午1小時的午餐時間戴上社交儀。

They found that women were only slightly more likely than men to engage in conversations in the lunch-break setting, both in terms of long- and short-duration talks. In the academic setting, in which conversations likely indicated collaboration around the task, women were much more likely to engage in long conversations than men. That effect was true for shorter conversations, too, but to a lesser degree. These findings were limited to small groups of talkers. When the groups consisted of six or more participants, it was men who did the most talking.

他們發(fā)現(xiàn)不管是長對話還是短對話中，女人只有在午餐的時候，才會比男人要健談一些。如果話題是圍繞著任務(wù)的合作的，長對話中女人的參與會比男人多一些。這種影響也較低程度的存在于短對話里。這些現(xiàn)象都局限于交談?wù)叩娜藬?shù)比較少的情況。當(dāng)群體里面有六個或者更多的人時，大部分時間都是男人在說話。

"In the one setting that is more collaborative we see the women choosing to work together, and when you work together you tend to talk more," said Lazer, who is also co-director of the NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks, Northeastern's research-based center for digital humanities and computational social science. "So it's a very particular scenario that leads to more interactions. The real story here is there's an interplay between the setting and gender which created this difference."

兼做研究數(shù)字人文科學(xué)和計算機社會科學(xué)的東北部科研中心主任的Lazer說：“在更需要合作的設(shè)定里面，我們看到女人選擇了一起工作，而當(dāng)她們一起工作的時候，說的話也更多。因此特定的情景能導(dǎo)致更多的交談。在這里，設(shè)定和性別之間的相互影響導(dǎo)致了這種差異?！保ㄓ⑽膩碓矗篠cienceDaily 翻譯：桃子@煎蛋網(wǎng)）