<p><strong>Guesswork is not what this site is about.</strong></p>
<p>Statistical analysis of factors of &quot;The Big 5&quot; personality traits:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://www.psychologistworld.com/personality/agreeableness-personality-trait" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Agreeableness</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Neuroticism</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Extraversion and introversion</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Conscientiousness</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Openness to experience</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>have been extensivley studied and are well understood in terms of the sex differences that emerge from biology, and also but less so from cultural differences.</p>
<p>It would be possible to design studies to research the various different modes and media of writing, given sufficient funding and analytical clout to do what you ask.</p>
<p>As far as this answerer can determine, no-one has yet given it much attention as it is a low-priority compared to the social issues that prevail in societies today. What you are asking would be considered trivial or &quot;Blue Sky&quot; research at best.</p>
<h1>Guesswork:</h1>
<p>Statistical analysis of many factors, correcting for others is (reductio) extended inductive reasoning, which is (reductio ad absurdum) guesswork.</p>
<p>Get the financial backing to gather a big enough (set of) sample(s) that you can leverage analysis out of (and the mental tools to bring it to order) and you're all set to make a &quot;guess&quot;.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-10T04:14:56.123Z
I think there has already have research about this, but it is about the field of discourse analysis
Ooker
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-10T14:18:02.367Z
@Ooker Quite true, but even with it's many sub-fields it still lacks the research in the specific area that the OP wanted.
Jiminy Cricket.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-10T15:58:45.147Z
Why do you think so? For me, this is the best example to use in machine learning
Ooker
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-10T16:33:43.740Z
@Ooker Not an area that I've studied yet, sounds as if you might have a point though and an answer...
Jiminy Cricket.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-10T01:59:31.963Z
2019-01-10T02:41:22.027Z
2020-06-17T09:55:31.633Z
Jiminy Cricket.
<p>While you are probably better to ask your question over at the <a href="https://ai.stackexchange.com/">AI Stack Exchange</a> for more practical answers on how to accomplish the task, I would also suggest you could take a look into the topics on Wikipedia for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociolinguistics" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Sociolinguistics</a>, and also <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_and_gender" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Language and gender</a> for the underlying theories as to why Machine learning models are able to make guesses/predictions with upwards of 80% accuracy in trained models such as the following.</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050916326849" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Machine Learning Models of Text Categorization by Author Gender Using Topic-independent Features</a> (86% accuracy - Russian corpus)</li>
<li><a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-54903-8_9" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Investigating the Role of Emotion-Based Features in Author Gender Classification of Text</a> (80% accuracy)</li>
<li><a href="http://aclweb.org/anthology/W11-0310" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Gender Attribution: Tracing Stylometric Evidence Beyond Topic and Genre</a> (85% accuracy)</li>
</ul>

<p>So to fully answer your question </p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Can one reasonably guess the gender of a person from their writing/speech contents?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>What is a 'reasonable guess' is not something I can define and is something you would wan't to think seriously about before using the predictions for anything of import to those you are labelling! However it would seem you can make a significantly better than random guess.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-10T21:14:52.200Z
2019-01-10T21:14:52.200Z
norlesh
<p>Is it possible to reasonably guess the gender of a person from a <strong>random sample</strong> of their writing (text, not handwriting)?</p>

<p>How about from the contents of their speech (not including their voice, of course)?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-08T20:27:05.750Z
Can you explain how this is related to psychology/neuroscience?
Bryan Krause
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-08T20:57:32.647Z
Because the female brain is different from the male brain.
Siddhartha
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-08T22:46:13.410Z
The possible answers to your question need not have anything to do with brain structure, I don't feel there is sufficient connection here.
Bryan Krause
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-09T00:21:31.643Z
Welcome to Psychology.SE. We work differently to most SE sites, where we have a strict policy that all questions should [show evidence of prior research](https://psychology.meta.stackexchange.com/q/993). Please help us to help you and [edit] your question to provide more information on what you have read on this subject, what made you ask this question, and any problems you are having understanding your research. If you found nothing, what did you Google? This helps to provide an answer which will be more helpful. If you still have trouble with this, please visit the [ask] page or [meta].
Chris Rogers
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-09T02:23:33.783Z
@BryanKrause I think depends on the **topic** one can guess the gender, and this is related to psychology. From my limited experience, female writers writing about sex can be different to male writers. Thomas, I'm not sure if one can guess the gender of the writer in a random sample, but guessing an aspect of the writer from their writing is more about linguistics. You may want to read more about discourse analysis.
Ooker
<gender><speech><writing>
Can one reasonably guess the gender of a person from their writing/speech contents?
Siddhartha
# Can one reasonably guess the gender of a person from their writing/speech contents?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-01-08)

Is it possible to reasonably guess the gender of a person from a **random sample** of their writing (text, not handwriting)?

How about from the contents of their speech (not including their voice, of course)?

**Tags:** gender, speech, writing

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Can you explain how this is related to psychology/neuroscience?  
> **username_0**: Because the female brain is different from the male brain.  
> **username_1**: The possible answers to your question need not have anything to do with brain structure, I don't feel there is sufficient connection here.  
> **username_2**: Welcome to Psychology.SE. We work differently to most SE sites, where we have a strict policy that all questions should [show evidence of prior research](https://psychology.meta.stackexchange.com/q/993). Please help us to help you and [edit] your question to provide more information on what you have read on this subject, what made you ask this question, and any problems you are having understanding your research. If you found nothing, what did you Google? This helps to provide an answer which will be more helpful. If you still have trouble with this, please visit the [ask] page or [meta].  
> **username_3**: @BryanKrause I think depends on the **topic** one can guess the gender, and this is related to psychology. From my limited experience, female writers writing about sex can be different to male writers. Thomas, I'm not sure if one can guess the gender of the writer in a random sample, but guessing an aspect of the writer from their writing is more about linguistics. You may want to read more about discourse analysis.  

---

## 2 answers

### Answer by username_5 on 2019-01-10. Score: 4 | Accepted answer

While you are probably better to ask your question over at the [AI Stack Exchange](https://ai.stackexchange.com/) for more practical answers on how to accomplish the task, I would also suggest you could take a look into the topics on Wikipedia for [Sociolinguistics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociolinguistics), and also [Language and gender](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_and_gender) for the underlying theories as to why Machine learning models are able to make guesses/predictions with upwards of 80% accuracy in trained models such as the following.

* [Machine Learning Models of Text Categorization by Author Gender Using Topic-independent Features](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050916326849) (86% accuracy - Russian corpus)
* [Investigating the Role of Emotion-Based Features in Author Gender Classification of Text](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-54903-8_9) (80% accuracy)
* [Gender Attribution: Tracing Stylometric Evidence Beyond Topic and Genre](http://aclweb.org/anthology/W11-0310) (85% accuracy)

So to fully answer your question

> Can one reasonably guess the gender of a person from their writing/speech contents?

What is a 'reasonable guess' is not something I can define and is something you would wan't to think seriously about before using the predictions for anything of import to those you are labelling! However it would seem you can make a significantly better than random guess.


---

### Answer by username_4 on 2019-01-10. Score: 0

**Guesswork is not what this site is about.**

Statistical analysis of factors of "The Big 5" personality traits:

* [Agreeableness](https://www.psychologistworld.com/personality/agreeableness-personality-trait)
* [Neuroticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism)
* [Extraversion and introversion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion)
* [Conscientiousness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness)
* [Openness to experience](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience)

have been extensivley studied and are well understood in terms of the sex differences that emerge from biology, and also but less so from cultural differences.

It would be possible to design studies to research the various different modes and media of writing, given sufficient funding and analytical clout to do what you ask.

As far as this answerer can determine, no-one has yet given it much attention as it is a low-priority compared to the social issues that prevail in societies today. What you are asking would be considered trivial or "Blue Sky" research at best.

# Guesswork:

Statistical analysis of many factors, correcting for others is (reductio) extended inductive reasoning, which is (reductio ad absurdum) guesswork.

Get the financial backing to gather a big enough (set of) sample(s) that you can leverage analysis out of (and the mental tools to bring it to order) and you're all set to make a "guess".

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: I think there has already have research about this, but it is about the field of discourse analysis  
> **username_4**: @username_3 Quite true, but even with it's many sub-fields it still lacks the research in the specific area that the OP wanted.  
> **username_3**: Why do you think so? For me, this is the best example to use in machine learning  
> **username_4**: @username_3 Not an area that I've studied yet, sounds as if you might have a point though and an answer...  

---

