Hi, my name is Reka Morvay, I'm a psychologist and I'm going to talk to you today about gender
differences in communication. Now research has shown that there are actually very few
differences in the way men and women talk. In the public consciousness there's this idea
that there are huge differences between what men say and what women say and how men communicate
and how women communicate. And it's actually been shown that both men and both woman can
be aggressive or loving, nurturing or patient or impatient in their communication. What
the real difference is between the genders is what they hear. When the other is talking.
Women are much more likely to be sensitive to hidden messages or read between the lines
about social implications. Men are much more likely to read between the lines about status
implications. And this comes from their differences in society. So if you have this difficult
conversation at home, where the woman says or where the man says, wow, I'm so tired,
I don't know how I'm going to get all my work done and the woman says, oh I know, it just
sometimes seems like there aren't enough hours in the day. And the man says, there you go
again, criticizing how much I get done. In this situation the woman was sensitive to
the social implications to what the man said and she was trying to communicate a message
about how she sympathizes and emphasizes about all the work that he has to do whereas what
the man heard was a confirmation of you're not getting enough done. So it is in these
situation that it's important to remember that we might hear different things or we
might be more sensitive to different messages and what the other person says.