The chattering chaps: When men out-talk the women

It is news which is likely to leave men speechless.

While they usually like to portray the female of the species as chatterboxes, researchers are claiming that in fact the reverse is true.

Men, they say, are more garrulous than women, and far more likely to try to dominate a conversation.

Studies of 4,380 volunteers found that the difference in the sexes is small but statistically significant. And it explodes the theory that women just can't stop talking.

Researchers at the University of California in Santa Cruz combined the results of three studies into the way men and women use language.

They found that men were more talkative in certain situations, such as when they talk to groups of people, or to their wives and girlfriends, or strangers.

But women chat more when talking to friends and children, said social psychologists Campbell Leaper and Melanie Ayres.

"Men were significantly more talkative than women," they said.

"Gender differences in talkativeness may reflect a tendency among some men to control the conversational floor when interacting with women."

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They believe that the differences are cultural, not biological.

"These findings compellingly debunk simplistic stereotypes about gender differences in language use," they report in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review.

"The notion that the female brain is built to systematically out-talk men is hard to square with the finding that gender differences appear and disappear, depending on the interaction context."

The researchers found that when women talk to strangers they are more likely to find common ground and interests, while men focus on trying to influence the listener.

A recent Gallup poll showed men and woman both believe females are most likely to talk more, while a large number believe that women are biologically built for conversation.

It is the second time in a few months that science has debunked the notion that women talk more than men.

In July, researchers at the University of Texas found that younger and welleducated men and women both speak an average of 16,000 words in a day.