Everyone spends some major hours on Facebook—in that respect both men and women are the same. But where they start to differ is how they use Facebook and the content they post on it.
A study published in PLOS One found that “husband” is one of the most commonly used words by women on social media. However, the word “wife” is hardly ever mentioned by men.
“Friends, family and husband were among the most commonly used words by women on the social media platform, but the word wife didn’t even register as one of the most commonly used words by men,” said a Daily Mail report. “The results are part of a study that analysed the language of 65,000 Facebook users to understand how men and women express themselves on social media.”
The research also found that online women are generally warm, using more compassionate and polite language; men on the other hand are hostile and impersonal.
“We found that women mentioned friends, family and social life more often, whereas men swore more, used angrier and argumentative language and discussed objects more than people,” said Dr. Margaret Kern, one of the study’s authors and psychology lecturer at the University of Melbourne.
Among the words that men most often use include “win,” “lose,” “bet,” “fight” and “sports.” Men, too, are shown to use the curse words such as “sh*t” and “f*ck” more regularly than women.
Meanwhile, the subject of discussion for most women revolve around “positive emotions, social relationships and intensive adverbs like sooo, sooooo and ridiculously.”
“In many ways, the topics most used by women versus men are not surprising as they fit common gender stereotypes,” said Dr. Margaret Kern said. “The computational methods let us make visible what the human mind does to automatically categorise people and things that we encounter in our everyday life.”
Looking at language used in social media by both gender offered a fresh perspective on understanding gender differences, said Dr. Andrew Schwartz from Stony Brook University.
“Here we were able to use a novel technique to explore psychological dimensions,” he said. “While some previous work suggests men are more assertive, the language in Facebook didn’t reflect this.”
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