• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

3. Articles (a, an, the)

a. women use more

b. men use more

c. no difference between women and men

4. Positive emotion words (e.g., love, fun, good)

a. women use more

b. men use more

c. no difference between women and men

5. Cognitive words (e.g., think, reason, believe)

a. women use more

b. men use more

c. no difference between women and men

6. Social words (e.g., they, friend, parent)

a. women use more

b. men use more

c. no difference between women and men

This should be a very easy test for everyone. A day doesn’t go by where we don’t hear thousands of words from both men and women. In fact, we have all been deluged with words from people of both sexes our entire lives. Who could possibly miss these questions?

As it turns out, most people do. This includes the leading scholars in many top departments of psychology and linguistics around the world. Your high school English teachers would have done no better. How about you? The answers are: 1. a; 2. c; 3. b; 4. c; 5. a; 6. a. Women use first-person singular, cognitive, and social words more; men use articles more; and there are no meaningful differences between men and women for first-person plural or positive emotion words. If you are like most people, you probably got the social words question right and missed most of the others.

Before going farther, it might be helpful to review the test answer key:

1. Women use first-person singular pronouns, or I-words, more than men. People’s pronouns track their focus of attention. If someone is anxious, self-conscious, in pain, or depressed, they pay more attention to themselves. Research suggests that women, on average, are more self-aware and self-focused than are men. The differences in the use of I-words between women and men are not subtle. In natural conversations, blogs, and speeches, women use I-words at much higher rates.

2. Men and women use first-person plural words, or we-words, at the same rate. The use of we highlights one of the most enigmatic function words in our vocabulary. The natural assumption is that when speakers use we, they are referring to themselves and their close friends. There are even famous psychology studies where people see the word we flashed on a screen and it makes them feel all warm and fuzzy and more connected to others.

We, as it turns out, is really two very different words. Yes, there is the warm and fuzzy we—“my wife and I,” “my dog and me,” “my family.” You can feel the welcoming arms of the w and e embrace us. So, yes, there is that tight sense of group identity that goes with we some of the time.

Another we, however, is the cooler, distanced, and largely impersonal we. My graduate students know this we. It’s when I say, “You know, we really need to analyze that data.” My son rarely feels warm about his father when I say, “We need to take out the trash.” As it happens, I have no intention of actually analyzing that data. Nor am I proposing to my son that we take a family outing to the trash bin. In many situations, people use the word we when they mean you. It serves as a polite form to order others around.

A variation on the cool we-meaning-you is the royal we. “We are not amused,” Queen Victoria is supposed to have said, meaning that the queen herself was not amused. Soon after the birth of her first grandchild, England’s prime minister Margaret Thatcher announced to the press, “We have become a grandmother.” Royalty, office holders, and senior administrators occasionally slip in the royal we when they should really be using the word I.

Finally, there is the purely ambiguous we that is particularly loved by politicians. We need change in this country and we deserve it! Our taxes are too high and we need to do something about it! I sometimes sit around with my students trying to deconstruct political speeches in order to figure out who the “we” is. Sometimes, the politician means “you,” sometimes “I,” sometimes “you and I,” and sometimes “everyone on earth who agrees with me.”

The reason we is such a fun word is that