Why men don't listen | Hacker News Reader

Why men don't listen

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

65 pointstelemachos44 comments

Reminds me of this blog post by Felix Salmon http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/04/01/economics-w... where he concedes that most economic journalists, himself included, don't really read economic papers because they can't be bothered to follow the math.

That means they can get snowed by unwarranted assertions in the more plainly written introduction and conclusion and cite the paper/study as saying something it doesn't.

From what I've learned, women use talking to clear out their mind, to reach a conclusion whereas men like to talk only after they're reached a conclusion. This also sets expectations in men and guides how men respond to women.

When a person is talking, men expect him to have a point and get there quick. This won't happen when a man is listening to a woman because women talk to find out themselves if there's a point at all. You can guess this can be totally boring for the man if he's stuck with the idea of just waiting and waiting and waiting for the woman to get the point. Soon the man will just learn that the woman's talk never reaches his expectations and stops listening. It's not about physical hearing, it's about mentally filtering out anything she says.

Neither approach to talking is wrong, they're just very different.

I've made it a point for myself to listen to my wife because I've seen how tremendously important it is for her. I don't expect her to get to a point and I'm not waiting for an interesting issue to be revealed in the end that I can then solve for her. I just listen, nod, make short comments, and what I expect from the discussion is her feeling better instead of a point getting delivered.

This is my observation too, at least for some women (and some men too, I am sure). However, I find it difficult to keep listening if I don't feel there is a point. How do you manage not to zone out?

I guess it's called love. I wouldn't want to listen to just any woman but I do want to listen to my wife. It helps to recognize that it's important to her: I can see her relaxing when talking and it feels good to help her.

I also reserve the right to not listen to her: in that case I'll just tell her that now is not a good time — I can't handle it now but I'll listen to her later. Perhaps thanks to this, I can indeed handle her most of the time.

Listening is easier when I know beforehand that her train of thought just wanders around and won't probably lead to any conclusion as I would understand an ending. Thus, I've learned to not expect one. My mind does drop off the track sometimes but I know I'll soon get back to listening again. Her words are sketches so it doesn't matter if I miss some as long as I hear most. I can still keep the key things in my head and she doesn't question whether I can recite what I've heard either.

Sometimes I can't do better than just half-listen: in that case I can sometimes keep my cool and make her happy, sometimes she will notice and ask me to focus more on her. Sometimes I can't, sometimes I can.

I don't think my wife particularly enjoys when I'm explaining to her some cool technical thing or praise something I did to my car either. She's not too interested in it and she doesn't know much of what I'm talking about. But if I want to tell her about those she always listens, up to my point and often beyond.

I'll rather live fifty years with her and try to not zone out while she's talking than live fifty years alone and try to not zone out while nobody's talking.

And that may well be the reason why men zone out. I know I do.

Good examples of how to give a close reading to the references in a popular book supposedly about new scientific findings.

The results are actually pretty shocking to me. I'm used to pop-science works stretching their references, glossing over caveats, extrapolating too much, etc., but some of the references here look blatantly fraudulent.

Citing a study that looked at gender-related hearing differences of stroke victims in their 50s and 60s as evidence that typical teenagers have gender differences in hearing is hard to interpret as merely a mistake or exaggeration, unless the author made an error in their citation manager and put the completely wrong study down.

Actually an interestingly good read about the dangers of explanatory neurophilia (http://bit.ly/p6fi8). After the second citation I knew something was amiss really enjoyed the second and third levels of links. Of course, everyone knows men don't listen to women because men's hearing has a trough at the exact frequency of women's speech. This had an evolutionary advantage because men could focus on hunting and defending the tribe without distraction while women used communication to better forage. This division of responsibility gave our predecessors a huge advantage over other predators and herd foragers. It also explains why most human societies tend to prefer specialization over generalization. I'm not going to go to the trouble to cite this, but if I had enough free time I'm sure I could bend some stuff out of context and get a bunch of folks to believe me.

Contrary to our expectations, we did not find any significant differences in the ability of healthy men and women to comprehend emotional intonation. </quote>

I think the truth is far more terrifying than the article implies. I think mostly, people don't communicate with each other at all, regardless of sex. In relationships especially, it seems people often come to take each other for granted.

The article had rather little to do with men or women not listening. Rather, it was a summary of the pseudo-science commonly evoked to justify the stereotype "men don't listen".

I agree. My former marriage was a prime example of that: Two intelligent, literate, articulate people who spent years arguing with each other on the false assumption that because we both spoke American English more proficiently than average, we fully understood each other. So not.

Is the message, Let not your mesage resemble white noise?

Deleted comment

You argument is going to be you don't read, as well as you don't listen?

I don't need to know why I don't listen! =P

Sometimes "won't listen" is confused with "won't agree with me on it even though I bring it up more than once."

This phenomenon is not limited to women.

I wonder why you felt the need to state that; I did not imply otherwise.

Perhaps because the article has the title "why _men_ don't listen".

Perhaps it was to help others who won't understand that you did not imply otherwise.

Yes, in the context of the article talking about "men not listen", the clarification was useful.

At first I suspected that this person may have felt offended by this for some weird reason, but now it seems obvious to me that you are most likely correct in your assessment. Rest assured I have only honorable intentions in noting my little observation here. Sometimes I guess it can be easy to misinterpret information by adding more information to said information that may or may not come from past experiences or from somewhere else entirely; Perhaps context?

The poster needed to say that because there is no greater fear for the modern devotee of the religion Feminism than that of appearing 'sexist.' It's a bizarre word of recent origin, and one that their cult seems to use for any sort of recognition of the differences between the sexes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule

Are you sure? Maybe it is not as ill intentioned as that, but merely his opinion.

I'm pretty sure. It seems quite hostile & derisive, and makes no salient point. It's a drive-by snark.

To make my own position in this thread clear: HN, and the wider hacker culture, is often unwelcoming to women. I speak out when I see something off-putting, or when a possibly well-intentioned comment may be interpreted the wrong way. I would like to see more women hackers and founders contributing to HN, and I would like to see more diverse viewpoints in the comments. My position is not always popular, but I soldier on.

Perhaps it may seem that way from your frame of reference just like how this person may interpret Feminism in the way stated from their frame of reference, but I always withhold judgment when there is insufficient information present; It is better to perform further inquiry than to misinterpret.

I believe you are making a mistake by speaking for all women, by stating that "HN, and the wider hacker culture, is often unwelcoming to women". In such matters we can only speak for ourselves, unless there is some official consensus to refer to more credible than what oneself might believe to be the general opinion; That is, a reliable source.

I myself do not care what gender people have here; To me that is an attribute that simply does not exist in these contexts.

This person meant to insult me. There is really no positive spin you can make on that comment. I didn't bring up feminism, nor did I make anything like a claim that men and women are biologically identical. He made up some things, and then he painted me as a member of some bizarre cult. If he revisits this thread, it will likely be to insult me again. Perhaps he will not. That would be nice.

And you may not have meant your comment here to be dismissive and condescending, but you are basically telling me that this is all in my head, and I should be quiet. I counter that I am far from the only woman with this opinion, and you have not paid close attention (because why would you? you aren't a woman, this doesn't generally affect you).

In any case, this is not the place to debate that topic. I spoke up, and I got insulted for it, but it's all good. If you are truly interested in learning more, please refer to the following links, and feel free to contact me by email if you have questions. Otherwise, enjoy your day.

Recent issue at a Rails conference: http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-sex-...

A PDF of slides about women in FOSS you may find interesting: http://valerieaurora.org/review/flosspols.pdf

Again you display that you easily assume in place of providing evidence. You assume he meant to insult you, but how can we know unless he explicitly states so? You somehow interpret what I said as telling you to be quiet, but how can what I said be interpreted as anything else than "please provide sources if a general consensus like this exists". Furthermore you make assumptions about my gender, of which I have revealed no information.

I think you should give people the benefit of the doubt before you decide to attack them or decide that they meant to insult you. Of course you are free to interpret as you want, but I warn you: Confirmation bias can be a real hindrance in seeing the truth.

In the course of this conversation, I am the only one who has been attacked. If you can tell me a way I can interpret that comment that is not insulting, I'd be happy to hear it.

I have been quite civil, I have presented two sources and could procure more, but I am done with this thread. I know that my opinions on such things are unpopular here, and I do not expect to be lauded or reach consensus.

"Confirmation bias can be a real hindrance in seeing the truth." If you want to think that's what this is, that I'm a lone woman with a chip on my shoulder, if that makes you feel better, then please disregard the sources I posted earlier.

I can't see how you've been attacked, unless you're a feminist. I don't know if it's insulting in general or insulting to you. It wouldn't be insulting to you if it wasn't insulting to you.

That last part is a straw man because you did not provide evidence for your claim that "HN, and the wider hacker culture, is often unwelcoming to women" at the time you made that claim. Also you should clarify if you mean "all women", "some women" or "one woman" by "women".

In any case I strongly suspect you have not closely examined my name.

You win. :)

Ridicule is often one's best defense against the ridiculous.

Most of the pseudo-science discussed in the article was some form of pop-feminism and most of them involved bogus claims of differences between the sexes.

The author meanders through several pointless studies and fails to answer his own blog post. Kind of like when women talk about anything (that's why men don't listen).

This is because he's not interested in answering the question. His main point, which people familiar with Language Log know (and thus the assumed target audience), is that the book The Male Brain takes common pop wisdom "Men Don't Listen", and proposes ad-hoc "scientific explanations for it".

The main point of this article, which is understood by readers, is to show that there is no real scientific basis for the claim "Why Men Don't Listen", despite what "The Male Brain" claims. This means going through referenced papers in The Male Brain (shown as red quotes) and showing that they do not, in fact, show what Brizendine claims.

So no, this article will disappoint you if you think you'll get an 'scientific' answer to the question.

The post is very long. I hesitated before submitting it, and then I considered posting a half-apology/explanation of what I found worthwhile there. (Then I remembered that that's discouraged in the FAQ.) Overall, I think it's worth the read, but that's not for me to decide.

No matter what else is true, your comment about women is completely useless and unhelpful. If it's meant to be a joke, it's not funny. If it's meant to be serious, it's just depressing. (It's also irrelevant, since the author of the post is male.)

TL;DL

Skip to the last few paragraphs and the comments, then if it seems interesting read the rest.

I normally dislike "tl;dr," but I do believe this is the one place where it is more than appropriate. Bravo.

Well, it was a “too long, didn’t listen” but I’m not sure anyone read. Alas.

Is it "because women talk too much"?

No, I've not read the link yet.

No. That false claim (promoted by the same author who is taken down in this article) was covered in other Language Log articles.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003420.h...

http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/003607.html

And a summary of articles in Language Log about related issues on supposed sex-linked differences.

http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/003586.html

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