Hacker News Reader

Comment by camelite | Hacker News Reader

Your links do not justify your confident tone. Two are about the 7 Supreme Court Justices and some Google guy. That's 8 people. The first is about a study involving 11 male-female interactions (19 now), and a study which noted that "...The men interrupted their female conversational partners 2.1 times during a three minute conversation. That number dropped to 1.8 when they spoke to other men." So men just interrupt more in general, not against women specifically, i.e. not sexist behaviour but a simple gender difference.

Ironically, the guy's "fuzzy memories" are more accurate than your "research-based" opinions.

View on HN

> So men just interrupt more in general, not against women specifically

I'll buy that. If this disproportionately affects women then I'll buy that too. I don't buy that men interrupt women specifically out of some sort of bias. My experience has been that the more passionate conversationalists among us will interrupt anyone who will let them.

> passionate conversationalists

a nice way of saying workplace bullies.

Not really. Bullies have something specific going on. They are trying to hurt people. Many average people get excited when they talk about a subject they are passionate about and enter into a state entirely unlike any bullying I've ever seen but which nevertheless results in non-bullying behaviors like talking over people. These people are exhibiting behaviors like interrupting because they are excited and passionate, not because they are trying to strike out at the people they are interrupting.

I'm occasionally accused of interrupting others. But here's the thing: I like being interrupted. I enjoy conversations with lots of rapid back and forth. When I'm misguided, I want to be corrected as quickly as possible. I want others to finish my thoughts.

But hey, I mostly rein it in :)

That's what I'm saying -- you're not a bully.

I think you're losing your focus on defending your position in the face of the criticism you're receiving. I agree that there are other possible explanations besides "passion" such as men generally displaying more aggressive behavior which could, I'm conjecturing because this is a hypothetical, spill over into not only physical behavior but also conversational behavior. However, without contextualization, aggressive behavior is not the same as damaging behavior which is what you're implying when you bring up bullying. For my part, I agree with the others who don't think your sources support the position you're taking.

That being said, it seems to me that the broader implication of your position is that when men and women participate in group dialogue the meta-game of the dialogue often leans in favor of the male speakers. I'd need to do more research to prove this but in general, if this was your position, I'd be inclined to agree with it based on my own anecdotal experiences. However, this still doesn't establish the hostile intention or implicit sexism that, from my reading of your posts, is presented in your claims.

Sometimes men care too.

The more interesting question is whether there's a 3rd variable we're missing.

You were right in your initial assertion: people talk over people. The people desperately trying to prove that "men talk over women" using statistical analysis are all missing the point.

The first thing to do, before looking for sex differences, is to try and identify the reasons why people interrupt, because there are many of them and sometimes there are conflicting or related motives.

Gathering anecdotal evidence would be a starting point for articulating hypotheses. What are the conditions of the discussion? What is at stake? What is the expertise of the participants? What are the personality factors? What is the general conversational ability of each participant? How long is the attention span of each participant? What is the apparent purpose of each individual interruption?

There are so many factors you could look for before looking at sex differences. And would the sex differences persist when those factors were controlled for?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com