Monday, July 16, 2007

Sunday's Luann


Funny that this Luann should come out ten days after a study on the same subject that found:
Another stereotype — chatty gals and taciturn guys — bites the dust. Turns out, when you actually count the words, there isn't much difference between the sexes when it comes to talking.

A team led by Matthias R. Mehl, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, came up with the finding, which is published in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The researchers placed microphones on 396 college students for periods ranging from two to 10 days, sampled their conversations and calculated how many words they used in the course of a day.

The score: Women, 16,215. Men, 15,669.

The difference: 546 words: "Not statistically significant," say the researchers.
It's interesting because, as J. Goodrich points out, studies that show that men and women are different gain more traction in the media than those that don't. Since there was such a big hullabaloo over this study, and since it came out a little under two weeks ago, one has to wonder if the writer of Luann just chose to ignore it, misconstrue it, or if the comic was written right before it came out and she he now feels a little silly.

I suppose that writing Luann would make someone constantly feel silly, so that's not that big of a deal.

3 comments:

MLCaldera said...

"...one has to wonder if the writer of Luann just chose to ignore it, misconstrue it, or if the comic was written right before it came out and she now feels a little silly."

Luann is actually written by Greg Evans, a guy.

Alex said...

Huzzah. I thought I wouldn't look it up this time and I'd be right... Good golly, talk about gender essentialism on my part!

Tukla in Iowa said...

FWIW, Sunday comics can have a lead time of a month or more.