232 Chapter 7and indirect. Even among children, girls’
language is more affiliative and boys’ more
assertive (Leaper & Smith, 2004).Qualifiers of Sex Differences
These conclusions about sex differences in lan-
guage are overly simplistic. Sex differences in
language are not always consistent. One fac-
tor that influences the language women and
men use is the sex of the person with whom
one is talking. The meta-analytic review of
children showed that sex differences in talk-
ativeness (girls more than boys) were larger
when children interacted with adults com-
pared to peers (Leaper & Smith, 2004). The
meta-analytic review of adult language showed
that sex differences in talkativeness varied
greatly by interaction partner (Leaper & Ayres,
2007). Men were more talkative than women
to spouses/partners (d= −.38) and strangers
(d= −.17), but women were more talkative
than men to classmates (d=+.54) and to their
own children (d=+.42). In addition, sex dif-
ferences were larger in mixed-sex interac-
tions (d= −.28) than same-sex interactions
(d= −.08). Thus, among adults, it appears that
men’s greater talkativeness is limited to con-
texts in which there is a status difference.
The interaction partner also influences
sex differences in the nature of language used.
Sex differences in affiliative speech (female
more) and assertive speech (male more) are
larger when interacting with strangers than
when interacting with people who are known
(Leaper & Ayres, 2007), underscoring the
idea that female and male behavior differs the
most when people do not know each other.
However, sex differences also were larger for
affiliative and assertive behavior in same-sex
than mixed-sex interaction patterns, suggest-
ing that women and men accommodate to
one another in each other’s presence. Thisidea was corroborated in a study of an online
support group among adults (Mo, Malik, &
Coulson, 2009) and a study of email ex-
changes among college students (Thomson,
Murachver, & Green, 2001). It appeared that
respondents used the language of their in-
teraction partner, which led to less gendered
language during other-sex exchanges.
Another reason for sex differences in
language may have to do with the topic of
conversation. Women and men speak about
different topics that require different lan-
guage. In one study, titled “Girls Don’t Talk
About Garages,” college students could accu-
rately predict the sex composition of a dyad
talking—not because of the language used but
because of the differences in topics (Martin,
1997). Male same-sex dyads talked about
sports, women, being trapped in relation-
ships, and drinking; female same-sex dyads
talked about relationships, men, clothes, and
feelings. Recall the interactions described at
the beginning of this section. How did you
know the first interaction was between two
women and the second was between two
men? One way you distinguished the conver-
sations may have been the topic. The topic of
the first interaction was a relationship prob-
lem, and the topic of the second was money.
In the study of college students, perceivers
were more accurate in identifying same-sex
dyads than cross-sex dyads. The greatest
confusion was between female-female dy-
ads and cross-sex dyads. The conversations
and language used in cross-sex dyads may be
more similar to those used in female same-
sex dyads. As you will see in Chapter 8, men
are more likely than women to change their
behavior when interacting with the other sex.
Find out for yourself if your classmates can
identify the storyteller with Do Gender 7.2.
To make matters more complicated,
the nature of the topic and the sex of theM07_HELG0185_04_SE_C07.indd 232 6/21/11 8:11 AM