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“He talks about as much as a fish,” Paul Newman's character said about Kevin Costner (who played his son) in the movie “Message in a Bottle.”
Men - long time evolutionary descendants of 2 x 4's and members of the modern-day species Homo-mute-enses, may have very good reason for keeping their mouths shut.
For one thing, it keeps local authorities from slapping clothespins on their tongues and locking them up in the town stocks, which is what they did with women in Colonial America, for the crime of “talking too much.” We'll leave that little factoid unattended.
Clothespins and wrist and neck locking devices aside, what forces over the millennia may have led to silence in men, or at least to the advanced grunting seen in the Cro-Mags in the Geico commercials? Most likely, it was their cravings for chicken tenders.
When ancestral males hunted and stalked their prey, they had to hide in the brush and be as motionless and quiet as possible.
Things aren't much different today. When modern men provide meals for their kids, they're still motionless and silent, but that's because they're wedged in their Yugos by their love handles and because they have to keep quiet so they can hear the drive-thru cashier when placing their orders at McDonald's.
Actually, our male ancestors had to be quiet for a few different reasons. Tall grass and foliage brimming with a congregation of male Cro-Mags gabbing about the church bake sale and the new knitting needles they just bought at Jo Anne Fabrics just didn't fly with the ladies. Their women wanted them to bring home the bacon, not a decorative floral print for the cave entrance.
But are men really as quiet as everyone thinks?
Yes. And that's all I have to say.
Actually, on average, men and women produce about the same amount of words per day, around 16,000. The circumstances under which each gender liberates its verbal progeny differ greatly however. Men talk more in public settings while women tend to talk more among each other and to their spouses. Verbal exchanges are the mortar for the relationships women find themselves in.
From an evolutionary perspective, it should not be surprising that men talk more in public settings. In most species, males are the noise makers - the attention getters. Whether it's noisy insects in the summertime, bugling elk in autumn, male birds and their extensive song repertoires, Tiny Tim, Metallica, or Salvador Dali's habit of ringing a bell when he wanted attention from people, males can't help but do things that get them noticed. The details of selecting a mate and attracting one are what Darwin collectively termed sexual selection.
In human males, this apparently means talking more around members of the opposite sex. So next time hubby rambles on at a dinner party, club him.
And remember, if your man's shortcoming is his inability to listen, remind him why all dumb blond jokes are one liners — so men get them.
Robert Valko is a graduate of Northwestern University and currently is writing two books on evolutionary psychology. E-mail Robert with column ideas at vailko@yahoo.com.
Men - long time evolutionary descendants of 2 x 4's and members of the modern-day species Homo-mute-enses, may have very good reason for keeping their mouths shut.
For one thing, it keeps local authorities from slapping clothespins on their tongues and locking them up in the town stocks, which is what they did with women in Colonial America, for the crime of “talking too much.” We'll leave that little factoid unattended.
Clothespins and wrist and neck locking devices aside, what forces over the millennia may have led to silence in men, or at least to the advanced grunting seen in the Cro-Mags in the Geico commercials? Most likely, it was their cravings for chicken tenders.
When ancestral males hunted and stalked their prey, they had to hide in the brush and be as motionless and quiet as possible.
Things aren't much different today. When modern men provide meals for their kids, they're still motionless and silent, but that's because they're wedged in their Yugos by their love handles and because they have to keep quiet so they can hear the drive-thru cashier when placing their orders at McDonald's.
Actually, our male ancestors had to be quiet for a few different reasons. Tall grass and foliage brimming with a congregation of male Cro-Mags gabbing about the church bake sale and the new knitting needles they just bought at Jo Anne Fabrics just didn't fly with the ladies. Their women wanted them to bring home the bacon, not a decorative floral print for the cave entrance.
But are men really as quiet as everyone thinks?
Yes. And that's all I have to say.
Actually, on average, men and women produce about the same amount of words per day, around 16,000. The circumstances under which each gender liberates its verbal progeny differ greatly however. Men talk more in public settings while women tend to talk more among each other and to their spouses. Verbal exchanges are the mortar for the relationships women find themselves in.
From an evolutionary perspective, it should not be surprising that men talk more in public settings. In most species, males are the noise makers - the attention getters. Whether it's noisy insects in the summertime, bugling elk in autumn, male birds and their extensive song repertoires, Tiny Tim, Metallica, or Salvador Dali's habit of ringing a bell when he wanted attention from people, males can't help but do things that get them noticed. The details of selecting a mate and attracting one are what Darwin collectively termed sexual selection.
In human males, this apparently means talking more around members of the opposite sex. So next time hubby rambles on at a dinner party, club him.
And remember, if your man's shortcoming is his inability to listen, remind him why all dumb blond jokes are one liners — so men get them.
Robert Valko is a graduate of Northwestern University and currently is writing two books on evolutionary psychology. E-mail Robert with column ideas at vailko@yahoo.com.
