From Popular Delusions, a blog by Honors Intro to Psychology students
More Like Neighboring States! | Popular Delusions (wordpress.com)
Have you ever heard the phrase “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus?” Or do you ever just feel when communicating with someone of the opposite gender that you are two very different people from what feels like two very different planets? Like Mars and Venus?
American pop psychologist John Gray popularized the idea of women and men using different types of communication. He created the Mars and Venus series of self-help books, which began with Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus that advanced the belief that men and women have entirely different styles of communicating their needs. Gray wrote, “Not only do men and women communicate differently, but they think, feel, perceive, react, respond, love, need, and appreciate differently. They almost seem to be from different planets, speaking different languages” (as quoted in Lilienfeld et al., 2010, p. 145). This series sold over 40 million copies and was named one of the 25 most influential books of the 20th century, making it no wonder why this belief about men and women is so common.
There are many myths regarding men’s and women’s communication. One that is simply not true is that women talk more than men. According to research done by the Harvard School of Public Health, “With the exception of large groups, there was no detectable difference in talkativeness between men and women” (Onnela et al., 2014).
Psychologist Matthias Mehl also tracked the daily conversations of 400 college students, finding that women and men spoke about 16,000 words per day (Mehl et a., 2007). The idea that women talk more about personal matters than men is also untrue, with over 200 studies displaying that women are slightly more self-disclosing than men (Lilienfeld et al., 2010, p. 146).
Men and women are far more alike than different in their communication styles, disproving the idea that “Men are from Mars and women are from Venus.” Knowing this allows us to not automatically go into a conversation thinking the opposing gender will never understand. Instead of being from different planets, men and women are truly just from neighboring states.
References:
Lilienfeld, S. O., Lynn, S. J., Ruscio, J., & Beyerstein, B. L. (2009). 50 great myths of popular psychology: Shattering widespread misconceptions about human behavior. John Wiley & Sons.
Reed, J. (2023, January 23). Why are women around the world opting out of marriage? Boston University. https://www.bu.edu/articles/2023/why-are-women-around-the-world-opting-out-of-marriage/ 
Onnela, J. P., Waber, B. N., Pentland, A., Schnorf, S., & Lazer, D. (2014). Using sociometers to quantify social interaction patterns. Scientific reports, 4(1), 5604
