November 3, 2007

• Communication

  Men and women communicate in inherently different ways. At least this is true according to a section of a book I read recently. I found it quite fascinating.

  The book was called SEND and it was about email etiquette especially in the business world. I read it because I had felt I had made a pretty bad mistake in an email communication and wanted to see if reading a book about it might help me avoid similar errors in the future.

  Now most of the book was pretty useless. It was full of either obvious stuff or silly rules I don’t and won’t ever believe in. Like for example there was a part where it was talking about how you should order the TO list in your emails in the order of seniority or significance of the persons reading the email. And I’ve got to say that’s a load of absolute bullshit. If anyone thinks I’m going to waste one iota of energy worrying about the order of the to list in my email communications they’ve got another thing coming. Any company where such a triviality is inbred into the culture is a place I don’t ever want to work at and if anyone out there ever works with me and gets offended because I put their name in a random place in the to list of an email I sent you are welcome to take it up with me. I’ll tell you directly how much of a fucking moron I think you are being about it.

  Anyway, there was one interesting section where the author quotes a psychologist who studied the differences in the manner in which men and women communicate. There was a set of bulleted list of differences and I wish I had the book here in front of me so I could quote it all but alas it was packed away in storage.

  However, there was one point that I remember quite clearly and it seemed particularly important. If it is true, it explains a lot.  The point was this:

  - Women tend to prefer to start a conversation with smalltalk and then build up to important stuff whereas men prefer to get straight to the point.

  By ‘smalltalk’ is meant just sharing communications about each other’s day and asking how people are doing and sharing details about what is happening in their lives or in the world in general. By ‘getting straight to the point’  is meant basically picking a sort of main idea like in an essay for the communication addressing it directly, solving or resolving whatever the matter is at hand and then moving on to other things.

  The book didn’t go into the consequences of these differences but I should think they’d be pretty clear. In a conversation with a woman that goes in the manner the woman prefers that starts small and builds up bit by bit until it gets to a climactic matter of greater seriousness, a man is likely to feel by the end of the conversation as if they were just run over by a bus. What the hell happened? We were having such a pleasant conversation and then all of sudden she brings that up and everything sort of spiraled down hill. That’s what the guy is likely to think.

  In contrast, when a man stats a conversation directly and intentionally about something of seriousness with a woman, she is likely to feel as if she is being put directly under attack. She would want to push back and start slower, to build a level of comfort and empathy before the serious topic comes up. The man would just want to get straight to it and then after it was resolved maybe then start another lighter conversation as a separate entity.

  Similarly, if a woman starts of a conversation with smalltalk, the man is likely to think that that is the main idea, the purpose of the conversation, and often not think that the conversation is very important or has any significance overall. Once they reach a point where there is a break in the smalltalk or the smalltalk seems to be winding to a close, the man would start to initiate ending the conversation since to his mind it isn’t a big deal and the conversation has already achieved its ends. He isn’t likely to try and bring up more smalltalk in order to keep the conversation going. Rather conversations are discreet entities for him and so he would consider it appropriate to start another conversation if need be, but not to continue the existing one that has ended.

  Of course in the woman’s mind that’s exactly what should happen. The smalltalk has to continue in an ebb and flow over a period of time in order to even have an opportunity to build up to the point where the important stuff can begin to be said. She might well feel hurt or ignored if the man terminates the communication without engaging in sufficient smalltalk to give her the opportunity to talk about whatever the main idea of the conversation was really supposed to be for her. It should be noted that the point of the conversation need not be something tangible for her. It might just be to get a sense of how the object of her conversation is doing or to develop a closer sense of connection with that person or something else entirely.

  There are of course going to be situations where a woman purposefully doesn’t get to her main intended subject matter. Circumstances where during the course of the smalltalk she decides not to bring it up after all for whatever reason or another. These correlate to circumstances where a man just doesn’t engage in conversation at all simply deciding that he is unwilling or unable to talk about whatever it is he really wants to talk about.

  So anyway, none of this stands as particularly unique observations. I mean it sounds fairly similar to the kind of advice my mom used to give me and that I am sure moms everywhere give their children sometimes about how to communicate with people. It amuses me a great deal that modern social science manages to develop deep and complex theories that really end up only showing the same truths that parents have been passing down to their children and grandchildren for generation upon generation. But I guess that’s how the body of human knowledge expands.

  Of course these differences probably aren’t as black and white as I’ve described and nor am I sure strictly speaking that they are really gender invariant.  There are probably many men who communicate in the manner that has been ascribed to women above and many women who communicate more like men. At best there might be a strong correlation between the male desire for directness and the female desire for communication to progress up to the point of significance. I seriously doubt that this is inherent too. I would be surprised if it were built into our genetic code. It is probably culturally constructed and in some societies it may well be different. In a hundred years maybe it will be exactly the reverse here too. Who knows.

  It should also be noted that people are probably able to behave differently under various circumstances. So, for example, in the business world directness is valued as a kind of a virtue, absurdly imo. That culture imposes upon people a tendency to be direct and to the point whether or not that is their natural inclination in order to succeed. But it is totally possible for a person to behave one way at work and another way in every other social interaction they engage in. People do that all the time. If the correlation above holds and my observation about business is true, many women must be being required to do exactly that every day.

  Overall there’s a long continuum of attitudes and people could fall anywhere on that continuum in terms of how a conversation should progress in which they would feel most comfortable with. It is probably true that there are lots and lots of misunderstandings that arise from people communicating with one another when they are closer to the opposite extreme ends of this continuum. But I don’t think these misunderstandings are necessary. They can be avoided. All that is needed is for people to be mindful of where they themselves stand on this linear progression and to try and figure out where the people with whom they are conversing also stand. Then they need to moderate their own expectations in order to be closer in line with their communication target though of course without going beyond what they themselves are comfortable with.

  Anyway, that’s enough of that. If anyone could point me in the direction of the original works and studies discussing these topics I would be much appreciative. A quick search through the internet hasn’t brought anything up but I’m really curious about it.

  I also wonder if any of this is at all true too?

  • 12:32 pm
  • 3 Comments