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Linneman postulates that female champs deploy upspeak to appear less dominant, hence more likable. “Studies show that if a woman comes across as too assertive, too confident, or too successful, then she’s regarded as unfeminine,” he explains. “So a woman might say, ‘OK, I’m beating the pants off these guys, but I don’t want to come across the wrong way. One way I can repair this is to sound uncertain.’ ” Men were more than twice as likely to use uptalk when answering correctly after a woman answered incorrectly, as opposed to following a man who answered incorrectly—seemingly “a weird kind of chivalry,” Linneman says.