

Why men don't listen - telemachos
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2232

======
albertsun
Reminds me of this blog post by Felix Salmon [http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-
salmon/2010/04/01/economics-w...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-
salmon/2010/04/01/economics-without-mathematics/) 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.

------
yason
From 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
This 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?

~~~
yason
I 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.

------
tokenadult
Good examples of how to give a close reading to the references in a popular
book supposedly about new scientific findings.

~~~
_delirium
The 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.

------
mainguy
Actually an interestingly good read about the dangers of explanatory
neurophilia (<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.

------
d0mine
_Contrary to our expectations, we did not find any significant differences in
the ability of healthy men and women to comprehend emotional intonation._
</quote>

------
keefe
I 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
The 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".

------
balding_n_tired
Is the message, Let not your mesage resemble white noise?

------
vishaldpatel
I don't need to know why I don't listen! =P

------
Dellort
Sometimes "won't listen" is confused with "won't agree with me on it even
though I bring it up more than once."

~~~
dgabriel
This phenomenon is not limited to women.

~~~
Dellort
I wonder why you felt the need to state that; I did not imply otherwise.

~~~
calcnerd256
Perhaps it was to help others who won't understand that you did not imply
otherwise.

~~~
joe_the_user
Yes, in the context of the article talking about "men not listen", the
clarification was useful.

------
startuprules
The 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).

~~~
archgoon
This 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.

------
george_morgan
TL;DL

~~~
raganwald
I normally dislike "tl;dr," but I do believe this is the one place where it is
more than appropriate. Bravo.

~~~
george_morgan
Well, it was a “too long, didn’t listen” but I’m not sure anyone read. Alas.

------
pbhjpbhj
Is it "because women talk too much"?

No, I've not read the link yet.

~~~
archgoon
No. 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.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003420.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>

