The Power of Words in Social, Clinical, and Personality Psychology

The Power of Words in Social, Clinical, and Personality Psychology

The words people use in their daily writing and speaking has the potential to reveal a great deal about their personality, social situation, and psychological state. Using a recently-developed computer text analysis program, it is possible to distinguish people's linguistic styles from the content of their speech. Linguistic style can be discerned from a broad class of words called particles, which include pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs. A number of recent studies are presented that suggest that particle use in natural speech is highly reliable over time and can reflect individuals' honesty, depressive tendencies, age, sex, and cognitive processing abilities.