WHAT EMPIRICAL RESEARCH TELLS US ABOUT GENDER AND COMMUNICATION

Alfred Snider, University of Vermont

PERSUASIVE ABILITIES

When everything else is manipulated to be equal, men are more persuasive.

The reason is audience perceptions, that males are more competent and expert and that women are more nurturing.

Women must do better in order to be equal. And if they try to be forceful and assertive they receive negative reactions from those who hold these gender stereotypes.

Male doctors, for example, can use aversive strategies to gain patient compliance, but women cannot do so effectively.

Assertiveness, argumentativeness and aggression:

  • Assertive: men can be, women can be punished for it.
  • Argumentative: men are more often argumentative than women, mostly because women fear he sexist consequences of being perceived as argumentative.
  • Aggressive: Men can sometimes get away with it, women seldom can.

BEING PERSUADED

Early studies show women were more easily persuaded then men, but now that is gone and men and women and equally persuadable.

This can be because early studies were on topics men already knew about and because they used mostly male sources. Men are more often persuaded by men, while women are equally persuaded by men and women.

Persuasibility is influenced more by plans, goals and values much more than h gender. Manipulation of these factors shows that gender is far less important.

CONFORMITY:

Women are more likely to conform than men. They feel group norms and respect them more.

Dessert selection study: If the person who orders before you selects a specific dessert, will you conform to their selection? 77% of women conformed, 43% of men did. When the first person selecting was female, women conformed 75% of the time and men 27% of men conformed. Men conformed much more to men who selected first.

LYING:

Men tend to be more successful at lying than females. Females, when they lie, give little hints of lying, while men cover up better. This could be because women tend to be more involved in conversations than men, and thus tend to me more authentic and leak clues of lying.

While women are less successful at detecting lies than men, it is unusual because women are more attentive to non-verbal cues than men, but they tend to see the non-verbal cues that liars are trying to send, not those that leak out.

HUMOR

Both men and women enjoy female disparaging humor more than male disparaging humor, although more so if they have traditional gender stereotypes, but even progressive people tolerate female disparagement more than male disparagement.

Jokes coming from PLAYBOY were thought by men to be funnier than woman. But, jokes about the Gulf War were funnier to women than men.

Men successfully deploy humor better than women, as a study of college professors show.

POWERLESS LANGUAGE: um, ah, false modesty, self-deprecation, etc.

Men are punished more than women for using it.

CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENTS

Was dominated by men, now equal men & women.

Because women have more purchasing power.