Complaining – Which Gender does it More?

So late in the evening last Thursday I found myself absent-mindedly scrolling through Twitter, as I am sure many of my peers have done. And I happened upon a message from one of the many joke accounts set up just to get a reaction out of people. Considering the language used, I cannot exactly repeat what was said here but the gist was to get a laugh out of the assumption that women complain more than men. As I got around to thinking about potential topics, this seemed like one to be explored, as I have many friends of both genders. Even though I have heard an innumerable amount of complaints over my 18 years (and uttered more than my fair share myself!) I didn’t notice any major difference between the two sexes. I therefore predicted that science would have found the same.

mashable.com

But I underestimated just how broad a topic this was. From scouring various sources, it appears that men and women each have different areas where they complain more than the other. As consumers, the Journal of Consumer Research conducted a study involving over 400 people as to whether they were likely to tell someone else about a bad shopping experience. The survey stated females were much more likely to talk to someone about a poor experience, especially their close friends. A White House study, using only 2 years for data over 30 years apart, found that men are the bigger whiners in the slightly more vague area of “work-family” conflicts. Some reasons were helpfully thrown out by the author, but they were nothing more than hypotheses, as the study didn’t ask for any specifics in its reporting. The best-rounded study I found though was a 2006 study by Women and Language that found more definitively than either of the two prior examples that the sexes complain for different reasons, but one does not necessarily complain more than the other.

gregorybknapp.com

That was pretty much all there was to be found on the Web on the subject. This I thought fascinating, as I thought this would be a relatively mainstream topic. It appears that not a lot of other research appears to have been done on the subject. Therefore, with no real findings in one way or the other, the null hypothesis (neither gender complaining substantially more than the other) has yet to be rejected. If I had to guess a reason for this, I would say that in a list of important issues that science is tackling at the present, this would have to be very low on the priority list. But the file drawer problem could also come into play in this situation. Low priority by publishers could have led to crucial data being stored away from public viewing, leaving the question unresolved. But with the limited resources available to me, my own personal hypothesis appears to tentatively hold up to the research that has been gathered so far.

6 thoughts on “Complaining – Which Gender does it More?

  1. Erik Samuel Ridley Post author

    Thanks for the replies guys! I’ll try to answer your question, Alyssa. As a guy, I can only speak for one side of this story, but I would fancy a guess that both genders complain a similar amount about each other, but with each complaining for different reasons.

  2. Jenna Snyder

    I feel like this topic is a file draw subject when it stands on its own but it could be a large factor when looking into reasons for divorce and marital issues. I agree with an above comment that there should be more studies done on this but I also think that it is such a minute issue when it stands alone. I think that the difference in genders could play a part in who complains about what and when but not the frequency of complaining. Everyone is different and experiences different things and react to them in their own way, giving off a different amount of complaining.

  3. Alyssa Hope Cooper

    I am not that surprised from the results of this blog. Both men and women both complain about completely different things. For example, men complain more about sports and work while women complain more about other people and themselves. Many people think that women complain more than men but that is not always the case. Just because women can be hormonal does not mean they complain more. What would be cool to find out is which gender complains more about the other. Do women complain more about men or do men complain more about women? What do you guys think?

  4. Caitlin Emily Whelan

    There should definitely be more studies on this. One could be testing 50 women and 50 men after a long week and seeing who complained more. They could also check what gender complained to what gender. For example if women complained to women more or if women complained to men more. This may seem obvious, but there can definitely be some outcomes we are not expecting. I found it interesting that each gender complains more on certain topics, which makes sense.

  5. Sarah Elizabeth Stiffler

    A week ago, I wrote a blog about which gender is meaner than the other, and after reading this I am starting to wonder if being mean and complaining are connected. Even though I found that boys are generally more mean than girls, there were still certain things that girls were more mean about than boys. Because being mean and complaining are both negative attitudes, I feel like there has to be some kind of association between the two. I haven’t been able to find research that explores that, but I think it would be easy to do an experiment about it. I’m glad you wrote about this!

Comments are closed.