"Showers In Boiling Water": 46 Quirky And Funny Female Habits That Surprise Men The Most

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus and life looks very different on each planet. Even the languages aren't quite the same.

According to a team of psychologists from San Francisco State University, men and women communicate differently. They looked specifically at something called "communicative abstraction," which is how we verbally convey our ideas and emotions.

The experts say it’s the tendency of people to use "abstract speech that focuses on the broader picture and ultimate purpose of action rather than concrete speech focusing on details and the means of attaining action."

"One gender difference that has been pointed to anecdotally is the tendency of women to speak about specifics and men to speak about the bigger picture," noted the team. "Across a series of six studies, we [found] that men communicate more abstractly than women."

There's a classic stereotype that men won't ask for directions on Mars, or Earth. They'd much rather get lost, and drive around mindlessly, until they finally find their way. While that might not be 100% true, research has found that men and women navigate the world differently.

According to Stanford University's site, navigation studies in both humans and rats show that females of both species tend to rely on landmarks, while males more typically get around by "calculating one’s position by estimating the direction and distance traveled rather than using landmarks."

There are plenty of other differences when it comes to life on Mars vs. Venus.

"Women excel in several measures of verbal ability — pretty much all of them, except for verbal analogies. Women’s reading comprehension and writing ability consistently exceed that of men, on average. They out­perform men in tests of fine-motor coordination and perceptual speed. They’re more adept at retrieving information from long-term memory," notes the Stanford University site.

The site adds that men, on average, can more easily juggle items in working memory. They're also apparently better at visualizing what happens when a complicated two- or three-dimensional shape is rotated in space, as well as at correctly determining angles from the horizontal. Men, it turns out, are generally better than women at tracking moving objects and at aiming projectiles.

There are big differences between men and women when it comes to mental health too.

"Women are twice as likely as men to experience clinical depression in their lifetimes; likewise for post-traumatic stress disorder," notes Stanford, adding that men are twice as likely to become dependent on substances and 40% more likely to develop schizophrenia.

Boys’ dyslexia rate is also higher than that of girls, as is their likelihood of being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

Apparently the reason men's and women's brains are different is not because they come from different planets. But rather, in big part because of the hormones running through them.

"In female mammals, the primary additives are a few members of the set of molecules called estrogens, along with another molecule called progesterone; and in males, testosterone and a few look-alikes collectively deemed androgens," explains the university site.

These hormones play a part in how we think and behave.