The Gender Similarities Hypothesis.

Hyde (2005) conducted a meta-analysis of the most up-to-date and methodologically sound 46 meta-analyses that examined psychological gender differences. She examined Leaper & Smith (2004) and Hyde & Linn (1988); she did not include any other study examined in this paper in her meta-analysis. Hyde found that “despite Tannen’s (1991) assertions, gender differences in most aspects of communication are small” (p. 586). The five meta-analyses concerning communication differences in gender, with a total of 13 different areas, had an averaged effect size (Cohen’s d ) of -.213, which according to Cohen’s benchmarks, is a small difference. Two of these communication meta-analyses did not study language: one examined studies on smiling and the other studied facial expression processing. The three meta-analyses concerned with language examined interruptions, talkativeness and whether the talk was affiliative or assertive (a different meta-analysis than Leaper and Sanders’ meta-analysis, discussed above), and self-disclosure. I computed that the average Cohen’s d of these three meta-analyses and their combined eight areas was -.039, which is decidedly insignificant. Hyde found some areas where the differences were statistically significant, but these areas were not related to amount of talk (they included throwing distance and amount of masturbation).

Gender differences in verbal ability: a meta-analysis.

Hyde & Linn (1988) set out to examine an adage in psychology that has been oft-repeated and seldom examined: that girls have better verbal abilities than boys. Their study included dissertations and unpublished studies, which are accessible via ERIC; all told, they examined 165 studies. The authors identified five different skills that might be measured in tests of verbal ability: definition retrieval, retrieval of names from a picture stimulus, creating relations between words, filtering for relevant information, and measures of verbal production. Unfortunately, Hyde & Linn (1988) did not report running tests without statistical outliers, instead simply excluding one study based on, apparently, their own judgment. They conclude, “that there are no gender differences in verbal ability, at least at this time, in American culture, in the standard ways that verbal ability has been measured” (p. 62). The verbal production subtests indicated that females performed better on tests that measure quality of production, but that males produced more in terms of “total talking time” (p. 64).