Explain how the media's representation of men's and women's communication styles contributes to the perception that men and women are different.

Question

Provide examples to support your argument.

Answer 1

Growing up male or female may influence the way you communicate in some situations, because men and women are socialized to communicate in specific ways. In factâ€"as exemplified in the popularity of books like Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (Gray, 2012)â€"many people believe that English-speaking men and women in the United States speak different dialects. These beliefs are reinforced by media depictions that tend to present stereotypical depictions of men and women in magazines, on television, and in movies. For example, one team of researchers reviewed how journal articles talked about gender differences in the past fifty years and found that because people are more interested in hearing about differences than similarities, shows and books that emphasize these differences tend to sell better and receive wider recognition (Sagrestano, Heavey, & Christensen, 1998). Even scholarly research tends to focus on, and sometimes exaggerate, the importance of sex differences; some researchers have reported that women's verbal style is often described as supportive, egalitarian, personal, and disclosive, whereas men's is characterized as instrumental, competitive, and assertive (Mulac, Bradac, & Gibbons, 2001; Wood, 2002), and as we saw in Chapter 2, there is some evidence that differences exist in social media "talk." But other research refutes this claim. A recent review of studies comparing males and females on a large array of psychological and communication differences, including self-disclosure and interruptions, revealed few significant differences (Hyde, 2006). How can these contradictory findings be explained? To begin, many studies of gender differences ask participants to report on their perceptions or ask them to recall men's and women's conversational styles (e.g., Aylor & Dainton, 2004). This approach can be problematic because people's perceptions are not always accurate.