I’d like to add this. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with intelligence, per se. But a friend of mine moved to a new neighborhood, where the neighbors weren’t particularly friendly and maybe nodded to her, or waved, or said ‘nice day, huh?’… There were two people living near her that DID befriend (that is, latch on to) her and suffered from diarrhea of the mouth. One was one of those never-left-mommy’s-house young women with a low level job who would come over uninvited and talk and talk and talk and talk about how many burgers they sold that day, a pink car going thru the drive-thru, etc. The other was a middle aged housewife who didn’t drive, did nothing in particular all day, another non-stop talker who got SO bad, my friend ‘un-friended’ her and refused to have anything to do with her. … Both these talkers probably had mental issues.
The few really, super-talkative, never-shut-up people I’ve known have been highly intelligent.
There was this one guy I knew in college (he was a grad student in his mid-20’s) who never shut up. He was quite popular anyway, which I never quite understood–esp. with girls. One evening I was at a dinner party and developed a headache during the after-dinner chat, and I spent well over half an hour waiting for him to shut up for 5 seconds so I could jump in and offer my excuses and go home. Eventually I just interrupted him.
He was also a terrible gossip, and when I got engaged (at 1am), he managed to get the word spread by 8am the next morning. (My roommate told her sister, and he was visiting her.)
IME people who talk a lot are often just totally oblivious…they’ve never had their words come back to bite them in their ass, they’ve never said anything humiliating, or if they have, they never noticed, and lastly, their parents let them talk.
I grew up in a house where I as the child was expected to be seen and not heard, and when I did speak, was mocked a lot. And I had a tendency to blurt things out, which got pretty humiliating.
Which has resulted in a fairly quiet adult, who only talks when necessary, and I try to pre-judge most of the things I say and try never to blurt anything out. It has nothing to do with intelligence or the lack thereof, I say - it’s the kind of reception you expect to get for your words.
I had a friend who would call me up and yammer on and on. Sometimes, my ear would get tired and I would hold the earpiece away from my ear and just say “Uh-huh,” into the mouthpiece even though I had no idea what she was saying. She never noticed the difference.
A few times I was tempted to lay the phone down, and go make a sandwich or something, and then come back, just to see if she would notice that. I never did it, but maybe I should have.
DH’s stepfather is the same way - he thinks he knows everything about everything, and he’ll tell you. And tell you. And tell you…
I let DH’s nephew do my dirty work once, and it’s gotten marginally better. I’d feed nephew the Google words to use to look up the right answers, and let nephew, quite a know-it-all in his own right, take the credit for shouting them out and proving him wrong.
I’m not sure it has anything to do with intelligence, either. Perhaps sometimes it does, but for a lot of people, it seems to have something to do with their tolerance of silence or their inability to have an internal vs. external monologue.
My mom can talk for hours about nothing at all, but it’s not because she’s stupid (well, I do consider her uninformed, but I’ve complained about her a lot and will try not to go there), but she’s admitted that she absolutely cannot stand silence. It’s probably from years of living alone, but silence genuinely makes her uneasy. That’s why she usually has a television on in at least two rooms when I visit her (the sun room and the kitchen); she hates quiet. She even talks over television, which I find irritating; I can’t pay attention to two conversations at once and we rarely even have the TV on when she’s not visiting, so I’m usually more inclined to shut it off for a conversation. My sister has inherited this, too, and she’s one of the most intelligent people I know.
In contrast, by the end of the day, I’m usually done talking. I talk a lot at work, talk a lot with my three-year old (who’s a total chatterbox himself), talk over dinner with my husband… I’ve completely run out of material in the evening and just want time to think. As for intelligence, well, let’s just say that for every year I age, I feel that much dumber.
Are you sure? Next time put a coat over the back of a chair , put a hat on a cabbage and set it on the coat’s shoulders. Then see if she’ll talk to the “skinny, green skinned guy”.
Maybe it’s like students who just write and write and write during an exam, hoping there’s a right answer in there somewhere.
My MIL was a non-stop talker. I did the same experiment described above one time – sat perfectly still and silent with no response at all. After an hour she was still talking. I couldn’t take it any more, excused myself, and went into another room. Her problem was not necessarily lack of intelligence but an excess of self-centeredness.
I have a not-too-bright cow-orker who also talks all the time, whether anyone else is there or not. It’s as if the connection from her brain (such as it is) and her mouth is continually engaged. She talks about what she did, is going to do, is doing. If something actually happens that requires action, she will talk about it to herself, then to another cow-orker about it and what an annoying task it is, etc., etc, yadda yadda blah bla bla… I feel like going over to her every day and saying, “So just shut up and DO it already!”
Could it be insecurity rather than self-centeredness? (And those two things often go hand-in-hand anyway). Anyone I have ever known who couldn’t stop taking was insecure to some degree.
For example, my friend’s ex-girlfriend could not bear to be in a room with someone and not talk. It was impossible just to sit and enjoy a beautiful sunset, for example, because she felt too awkward. She couldn’t shut up to rent a DVD even because sitting in a room with people without talking was not social enough for her. She kept talking and talking as if it was the only way to be validated. Like the dog in the Bugs Bunny cartoon that used to hang out with the bigger bulldog. “We’re giong to chase a cat, right Skip? Sure Skip! We’re gonna get him! Yes, we are Skip! Chase a cat, that’s what we’re going to do…”
Come to where I work! The people who are rewarded are the ones who talk the fastest and the most. (Intelligently, that is.) People who are just as intelligent but who talk more slowly are perceived to be less intelligent. Welcome to the U.S.A.
I think it’s rather simple (in my unexpert opinion) if someone is stupid they are too unperceptive to pick up the social cues that people give off to tell them that no one is listening.
Not in my MIL’s case. Nope.
I have to combine this with msmith537’s answer. I had known of the old axiom of silence, but I had never really, really believed it. At one job I had many years ago, there was this one studly guy that would barely even nod his head to a greeting, and I would think, “This guy’s a winner/overachiever, that’s why he won’t speak with me.” Then, he finally opened his mouth. "I’m a Id-ee-ut’ was the only thing I heard.
hh