Anecdote: Women's memories are more speech-filled than men's

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24/05/08 |

Women's memories are more speech-filled than men's

By Shawn Callahan. Follow me on Twitter. Filed in Business storytelling.

Contrary to popular belief, new research is showing that woman don't talk more than men (see here and here). They do, however, recall more of what was said than blokes when asked to recount their experiences. We must have plenty of examples or these verbatim recollections in the stories we've collected over the years.

Richard Ely and Elizabeth Ryan have just published their findings and have also surmised,

" ... women may recall more speech than men because of differences in the way boys and girls are spoken to by their parents. "Parents are more elaborative and more emotional when conversing with daughters than with sons."

Christian Jarrett reports this news at the Research Digest blog and also notes that the researchers also discovered that emotional events were more likely to be remembered with what was actually said.

Take this example, in which a participant recounted the time he accidentally injured a team-mate in baseball, and went to see if he was okay: "The coach just turns to me and says 'Get out of here you little bastard, you have done enough.' I didn't play baseball for five years after that."

This reminds me of the story Miriam Margolyes tells on Andrew Denton's show when the Queen tells her to "be quiet." It's a terrific story told by a consummate storyteller.

Ely, R., Ryan, E. (2008). Remembering talk: Individual and gender differences in reported speech. Memory, 16(4), 395-409. DOI: 10.1080/09658210801949869

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