Men Are From Mars

Fantasy Football drafts are only a couple of months away. Weren't Fantasy Baseball drafts just three months ago? Yes, they were -- I know this because I hear all about it from my husband and his equally excited male friends.

It seems it's a big deal to them.

It's an extremely small deal to me and to my girlfriends. Actually, it's not even on our radars. And that got me thinking.

I love my husband beyond measure, but I will never completely understand him. In fact, that goes for all males. This goes deeper than their fascination with Fantasy sports or their ability to spend hours on a golf course. This isn't even about their vast knowledge of cars or their inability to remember our friends' names.

What I really want to know is: What is going on up there? What makes them tick?

Men say women are confusing, but I beg to differ. Women are easy! We like to talk -- about our joys, our problems, or anything, really. When I ask my husband what he is thinking, he tells me, "Nothing, really." When he asks me what I'm thinking, I will not only tell him what's on my mind, but I will also tell him why I think I'm thinking what I'm thinking, what I was thinking that led me to my current thought, and how these thoughts make me feel.

In our qualitative work, we often split groups by age (younger vs. older), by status (consumers vs. prospects), and yes, by gender.

Recently I was in the backroom for a group where company X was being discussed. A woman relayed her experience with the company using feelings. She spoke of how she felt when company X didn't meet her standards, how customer service for company X made her feel valued as a customer, and how this feeling of value was the ultimate reason she stayed with the company (even though she still had some unresolved issues).

A man in the same group (for this project, respondents were not split by gender) relayed his experience with company X in facts. This happened, then this, then this. There was an issue; he called customer service; they fixed it.

I've seen this scenario quite a few times while observing in the backroom. One of the things I find most fascinating about our qualitative research is how differently males and females process events.

And I've often wondered: Since men and women are so different, can we really make observations when comparing an all-male group and an all-female group? There are such deep differences in the thought processes of the genders that your learning from each group is almost always very different. Might it be better to always mix genders in groups (at least when the research calls for groups with both genders), and avoid all single-gender groups?

What do you think?