Gender differences in differentiating terms expressing certainty

Women's and men's understanding of the certainty expressed in mental and modal terms was examined. Subjects were asked to decide on the location of a hidden object when the only clue available was coded in the mental or modal term used in two conflicting assertions made by a male and female experimenter, each specifying a different location. Results showed that both women and men discriminated the degree of certainty expressed in 11 of 12 pairs of terms presented. Gender differences existed in the understanding of terms which were close in pragmatic meaning, with females making the distinctions more equivocally than males. The gender of the speaker had no influence on subjects' responses to contrasts which differentiated certainty, but on the contrast in which no preference for a term was found, subjects chose the location indicated by the male experimenter significantly more often. This study highlights a point of difference in pragmatic understanding between women and men and invites explorations of its origin.This research was supported by grant 410-89-0352 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to both authors. We would like to thank Lisa Boudreau, Dana Bryant, Rob Landry, Kiran Pure, and Hal Thompson for help with various aspects of this research.