# inverse correlation between belching after meals and asking after womenfolk
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/inverse-correlation-between-belching-after-meals-and-asking-after-womenfolk/496377
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 14, 2009, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/inverse-correlation-between-belching-after-meals-and-asking-after-womenfolk/496377 "2009-05-14T02:17:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2009, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/inverse-correlation-between-belching-after-meals-and-asking-after-womenfolk/496377/1 "2009-05-14T02:17:55Z")
In the book [Games People Play](http://www.amazon.com/Games-People-Play-Transactional-Analysis/dp/0345410033/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242267431&sr=8-1), there’s the following
[quote]
([http://quotequarry.com/quotes.php?id=614](http://quotequarry.com/quotes.php?id=614)):
> [@](#):
>
> Belching at meals or asking after another man’s wife are each encouraged or forbidden by local ancestral tradition, and indeed there is a high degree of inverse correlation between these particular transactions. Usually in localities where where people belch at meals, it is unwise to ask after the womenfolk; and in localities where people are asking after the womenfolk, it is unwise to belch at meals.
Could anyone explain why there is this inverse correlation?
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### Author:  [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2009, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/inverse-correlation-between-belching-after-meals-and-asking-after-womenfolk/496377/2 "2009-05-16T01:19:04Z")
bump
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2009, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/inverse-correlation-between-belching-after-meals-and-asking-after-womenfolk/496377/3 "2009-05-16T02:59:42Z")
WAG: Maybe a machismo versus effeminacy thing? While sometimes both of these traits can be brought together into one (see samurai), generally they’re separate.
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### Author:  [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2009, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/inverse-correlation-between-belching-after-meals-and-asking-after-womenfolk/496377/4 "2009-05-16T03:12:53Z")
I soooooooo want to see a cite for Dr. Berne’s observational data on which he based that conclusion.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2009, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/inverse-correlation-between-belching-after-meals-and-asking-after-womenfolk/496377/5 "2009-05-16T04:18:08Z")
This looks to me like the sort of thing that one finds when data-mining large amounts of information, but which don’t really mean anything. Remember, if you’re looking at 20 different completely random pairs of data sets, you’d expect about one of them to show a correlation significant at the 95% confidence interval.
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### Author:  [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2009, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/inverse-correlation-between-belching-after-meals-and-asking-after-womenfolk/496377/6 "2009-05-16T05:23:16Z")
Does “asking after another man’s wife” mean what I think it does?
I can see how the relationship would be ironic. You’d expect the kind of brutes who go wifeswapping to also grunt and belch. But maybe it’s the other way around. The brutes are possessive of their women, but the enlightened hippies have manners and also share.
Or maybe it’s all bs. Btw, what communities are these? What else separates them? Are they like, “this side of the settlement wife-swaps, this side doesn’t,” or are there larger geographic, economic, and cultural distinctions?
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### Author:  [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2009, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/inverse-correlation-between-belching-after-meals-and-asking-after-womenfolk/496377/7 "2009-05-16T05:45:49Z")
> [@Alex\_Dubinsky](#):
>
> Does “asking after another man’s wife” mean what I think it does?
Probably not. “Asking after \_\_” usually means asking someone how another person not present is.
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### Author:  [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2009, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/inverse-correlation-between-belching-after-meals-and-asking-after-womenfolk/496377/8 "2009-05-16T07:13:01Z")
> [@elfkin477](#):
>
> Probably not. “Asking after \_\_” usually means asking someone how another person not present is.
Oh. So what would then be interesting about the whole observation?