Sunday, August 14, 2005

Scientific Proof that Men Have One Track Minds

From Discovery.com:

"When women are speaking at great length, men tend to tune them out."


You think?!

Apparently there is a scientific "reason" that I hesitate to share because it will only encourage these beloved, baffling creatures to continue swearing up and down that "you did NOT tell me that! I do NOT remember you telling me to do that!" But in the interests of science, The Haggis shall provide:

Female voices, a new study finds, are more complex than male voices, making men's brains work harder when listening to them. The shape and size of the female vocal chords and larynx lead women to speak with a greater range of sound frequencies than men. Women also naturally have more melody in their voices. Listening to female voices activates the auditory center of a man's brain, which must analyze the different sounds at the same time he's interpreting the words. Men process other male voices in a different portion of the brain.

Which I guess confirms that a man can focus on only one aspect at a time: either content or tone. Which explains why he can be turned on by a breathy sultry voice reading the phone book OR completely miss the sarcasm when you say "Of course I'm not mad at you." ;)

7 comments:

Geoff said...

Hi, I'm a generic spammer, come to sully your site with more useless credit lines and other filth.

Actually, back on topic. I find I have no trouble listening to men or women, but a lot of my work involves spoken and written stuff, so no surprise there. I wouldn't be surprised if they found a link between illiteracy and conversational attention span.

Flexis said...
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Flexis said...
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Flexis said...

Well I had nothing to do in this rainy sunday when I bumped into your blog.

I find that theory interestng. Although I think that if we focus, we can pay attention to every little detail.

I guess I'll look for more information on the subjet.

Oh and about the ttle of your blog (what do you get when you take a scottish girl...). I guess you get the globaliphobics' Antichrist. Or a very cool person!.

Good blog by the way.

E said...

Wow. Spam has found The Haggis. That sucks.

But Raine and my new amigo el negro maldito have brought sunshine to the otherwise spammy day. :)

ENM~ I took six years of Espanol but do not know what maldito means. Please share.

Raine~As always, making me laugh. :)

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I'm not sure what to think of this "research", either. I don't seem to have any trouble hearing both content and tone, no matter which gender is speaking. However, I have to admit there are times my wife says something and I simply and quite honestly never heard her say it.

Though in my case, I think it's the fact that I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. I don't multi-task very well, but I can focus like no one else.

Anonymous said...

Yes science has finally determined that men are just plan LAZY. Not being able to do two things at once. Of course I wonder if women process other women's voices the same way as men do, or is it different.