I think it’s more of the placement on the autism spectrum (the whole thing, not just the outliers at the end). The population is distributed along that line, and those closer to the autism end not only tend to be men, but have what we think of as a typical man brain.
Narcissism is different, and autism can look to an outsider to be similar to narcissism.
But, in my observation when working with more men than women, the men will chat with each other about small stuff. The topics tend to be different unless it’s physical aches and pains, but men at work appear to be willing to chat. It’s just about how the truck is running or that they scored tickets to a concert or a hockey game. They don’t speak about how they felt about stuff.
I’m a woman, and I feel the same way. If we’re having a conversation and you never volunteer anything about yourself without my asking … well, I’m keeping track, and after a bit I will start asking “what about you?” more and more. But I’ll also mark you down in my head as a bad conversationalist yourself, because you made me do all the brain work of figuring out what we were talking about.
(that’s not ‘bad’ in the ultimate sense, but bad for me - you’re doing conversation in the way that makes it the most difficult for me)
Talking with people who talk about themselves is easy - they say some stuff they’re doing, you say some stuff you’re doing. Ultimately, if you’re both paying attention, you center the conversation around the stuff you both find interesting - which you discover by everyone volunteering some information.
Without going back to my dusty old communication and sociology books from college, the broad answer is this. Women see conversation as a social interaction; men see it as an exchange of information.
When it comes to basic “how was your weekend” exchanges, a man will decide it’s a low-value exchange. “Okay” is sufficient to answer the question and move on to the next thing.
That’s a gross oversimplification, of course. There are men out there who are genuinely interested in social conversation, even when no useful information is exchanged. There are a lot of men interested in gossip, because we all believe the dirt we collect will be useful either in the short or long term. And there are a lot of women who aren’t particularly interested in how your weekend was, either.
I could give a lot more information, but it would be of increasingly less value to the topic at hand. So the broad-brush answer is, yeah, it’s a guy thing.
I typically say “How was your weekend?” because it gives the person the freedom to answer however they like. If they want to give me the whole rundown, they can say “It was great! I went hiking and did blah, blah, blah…”. But if they don’t feel like saying a lot, they can just respond with “okay”. I typically don’t ask the question as “What did you do on the weekend?”, since then the person would feel obligated to say what they did on the weekend even if they didn’t want to.
As a related topic, do some people want it to be more of a series of question/responses like this?
A: How was your weekend?
B: Okay
A: What did you do?
B: I worked in the yard
A: What did you do in the yard?
B: I put in some bushes
A: What kind of bushes?
I would typically end things at Okay without having any followup questions.
Generally I don’t want to make any personal conversation at all. I know it’s expected, so I speak enough to dispel the awkwardness. That’s me holding up my end of the bargain.
I don’t care about what I’m saying, so I certainly don’t care about what you’re saying. We’re just making chitchat, not starting a family.
IDK, I do ask women about their lives that show interest in mine.
But that said, I can think of at least two occasions where I was asking about their lives, and I got the distinct impression they thought my questions were a prelude to me asking them out on a date. And they just sort of shut down.
So yeah, I sort of get guys not wanting to ask too many questions.
In my experience the conversations run along the lines of, “man did the Cardinals suck this week”.
~Max
This.
I think some of it is just that many people just expect women to do the emotional labor of keeping a community together. It’s not that men don’t like having a community, it’s just seen as low-value work. Women ask after people’s kids and spouses and weekends for the same reason that they organize condolence cards and congratulations cards for major events. It’s just seen–by men and women–to be a woman’s job. And while I am sure there are people who literally don’t care about any of that, the fact is that a professional community DOES run more smoothly if someone has their finger on the general pulse of what’s going on, and if people know that Bob just had a baby or Cathy lost her mom or whatever.
There are people who I go around and chit chat with once a week entirely because I know they need to contact, they need to feel heard and appreciated. These are generally people that are underpaid and underappreciated, and sometimes they are just people I know are struggling and I don’t want them to go find another job somewhere else. Some of them I don’t even like. I certainly am not having these conversations out of sincere curiosity about their dogs or hobbies. I think a lot of women do this sort of thing. I don’t think I’ve ever had a male boss who was even aware it was going on: instead, we get goal-focused team building and mandated discussions about “building relationships”.
It may be important to know about major events like that, but not that Susy won 3rd place in her Junior Ladybugs craft contest with a diorama of Florence Nightingale Crossing the Delaware made entirely out of elbow macaroni bought at Piggly Wiggly at 50% off with a coupon that was due to expire the next day that happened to blow across the sidewalk in front of Billy as he was walking home from his piccolo lesson where he is learning to play an uptempo interpretation of Jingle Bell Rock for the church play and doesn’t God work in mysterious ways.
Actually, some people want it to be more like this:
A. How was your weekend?
B. Great! Bob and I hiked at the nature reserve.
A. I’m so jealous. Billy was sick all weekend so we stayed in.
B. Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. Is he feeling better?
A. He seems okay, so we let him go to school.
Both parties get to relate what the significant event of their weekend, and receive emotional support from each other.
It’s the male style of speaking in our culture; men tend to talk about what they want to say without being prompted, with the expectation that the other person will do the same. He’s generally going to assume that if you want to share something with him you’ll do it without being asked.
He’s likely not even aware that you are bothered if you haven’t mentioned it; conversation styles tend to be pretty unconscious things.
Personally, I think it’s an asshole thing, not necessarily a man thing. I’m a guy and I try to make sure to ask people about themselves.
But that’s the shit that builds the relationships so that later when you hear Cathy lost her mom, it means something because you know something about Cathy. Or maybe you don’t need to know, but someone in the office need to know, so that Cathy doesn’t feel like her grief is meaningless. Generally speaking, women take on the burden of being the “someone”.
I don’t think it’s strictly a guy thing at all. I work with mostly women and I regularly hear what I call “parallel conversations”:
Mary: How was your weekend?
Sue: Nice, we went on a picnic. How about you?
M: Just hung out at home with the kids. Bobby has a new girlfriend.
S: Cool. Amy has a new boyfriend!
M: Bobby took her for ice cream.
S: Amy doesn’t like ice cream, can you believe it?
M: Neither does Jimmy. He loves cake, though.
S: Yeah, Amy loves cake too. She got a speeding ticket yesterday.
M: I got pulled over too! But no ticket.
S: Amy said the cop was nice.
M: The cop that pulled me over was SUPER nice!
and on and on and on.
I don’t know if it is a guy thing, but it is a me thing. I will respond to questions asked by co-workers, but you won’t get reciprocation from me. No particular reason for it, it just doesn’t occur to me to ask.
ETA:. I am an extreme introvert with a pleasant and cheerful public persona, which probably has a lot to do with it.
Yeah, it’s recognizing the humanity in other people. If it’s a guy thing, I’d argue it’s an old white guy thing. We’re the worst and we didn’t really need to give a crap about anyone else until very recently.
I do not agree.
I think it’s unprofessional to do much in the way of discussing the personal lives of co-workers, even casually. In particular, a man asking personal questions of a woman can easily become inappropriate.