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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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No one doubts that the words we write or speak are an expression of our inner thoughts and personalities. But beyond the meaningful content of language, a wealth of unique insights into an author’s mind are hidden in the style of a text—in such elements as how often certain words and word categories are used, regardless of context.
It is how an author expresses his or her thoughts that reveals character, asserts social psychologist James W. Pennebaker of the University of Texas at Austin. When people try to present themselves a certain way, they tend to select what they think are appropriate nouns and verbs, but they are unlikely to control their use of articles and pronouns. These small words create the style of a text, which is less subject to conscious manipulation.
Pennebaker’s statistical analyses have shown that these small words may hint at the healing progress of patients and give us insight into the personalities and changing ideals of public figures, from political candidates to terrorists. “Virtually no one in psychology has realized that low-level words can give clues to large-scale behaviors,” says Pennebaker, who, with colleagues, developed a computer program that analyzes text, called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC, pronounced “Luke”). The software has been used to examine other speech characteristics as well, tallying up nouns and verbs in hundreds of categories to expose buried patterns.
Character Count
Most recently, Pennebaker and his colleagues used LIWC to analyze the candidates’ speeches and interviews during last fall’s presidential election. The software counts how many times a speaker or author uses words in specific categories, such as emotion or perception, and words that indicate complex cognitive processes. It also tallies up so-called function words such as pronouns, articles, numerals and conjunctions. Within each of these major categories are subsets: Are there more mentions of sad or happy emotions? Does the speaker prefer “I” and “me” to “us” and “we”? LIWC answers these quantitative questions; psychologists must then figure out what the numbers mean. Before LIWC was developed in the mid-1990s, years of psychological research in which people counted words by hand established robust connections between word usage and psychological states or character traits
The political candidates, for example, showed clear differences in their speaking styles. John McCain tended to speak directly and personally to his constituency, using a vocabulary that was both emotionally loaded and impulsive. Barack Obama, in contrast, made frequent use of causal relationships, which indicated more complex thought processes. He also tended to be more vague than his Republican rival. Pennebaker’s team has posted a far more in-depth breakdown, including analyses of the vice presidential candidates, at www.wordwatchers.wordpress.com.
Skeptics of LIWC’s usefulness point out that many of these characteristics of McCain’s and Obama’s speeches could be gleaned without the use of a computer program. When the subjects of analysis are not accessible, however, LIWC may provide a unique insight. Such was the case with Pennebaker’s study of al Qaeda communications. In 2007 he and several co-workers, under contract with the FBI, analyzed 58 texts by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s second in command.
The comparison showed how much pronouns are able to disclose. For example, between 2004 and 2006 the frequency with which al-Zawahiri used the word “I” tripled, whereas it remained constant in bin Laden’s writings. “Normally, higher rates of ‘I’ words correspond with feelings of insecurity, threat and defensiveness. Closer inspection of his ‘I’ use in context tends to confirm this,” Pennebaker says.
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27 Comments
Add CommentThe use of "I" might also suggest that the writer is taking responsibility for his/her thoughts and actions. If so, the insecurity rap would be misplaced.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis idea is very similar to a paper published fairly recently using language to study the cognition and emotion of political leaders and newscasters during major tourist attacks (Jhangiani, R., & Suedfeld, P., 2005). It was noted that as a nation became more and more likely to engage in war, linguistic complexity - which reflected the ability to see alternative points of view - would decrease. Fairly interesting article!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only finding that flies in the face of common sense is that, as people age, they use the future tense more than the past.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI hate tourist attacks!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI sincerely hope some day political leaders and newscasters will live in a world free from tourist attacks. lol
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The only finding that flies in the face of common sense is that, as people age, they use the future tense more than the past. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell... the clock IS ticking after all.
Actions speak louder than words.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople say all kinds of dumb stuff.
This is one of the ideas that falls into the problem.
Why smart people believe weird things.
They just don't really think ....is it true or not.
Another one, I like. Talk is cheap. Think smart...think ahead.
Some enterprising coder should apply this as a plug-in for email programs, and thus present a icon as to the writers state of being. It might assist with communication, in that if one knows someone is under distress, they are going to respond differently than if not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't mind tourist attacks. We get way to many tourists in Southern Arizona in the wintertime. At this date, the only effective tourist attack is the vicious summertime heat!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI, on the other hand, enjoy tourist attacks. We have way too many tourists here in Southern Arizona. The only effective attack we've been able to muster is using the vicious summertime heat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhenever something touches politics, we find the unjustified extrapolations. For example, “McCain tended to speak directly and personally to his constituency, using a vocabulary that was both emotionally loaded and impulsive. Barack Obama, in contrast, made frequent use of causal relationships, which indicated more complex thought processes."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the biggest failings people suffer from is imputing causal relationships in places where they are not appropriate. The fiction is almost always more fun and full of more meaningful causality than the real world, where stuff just happens. Maybe the complex (and honest) thinker is the one who understands simplicity.
John, you may be a lawyer for knowing that causation and correlation are two separate concepts. I used then to fool juries very successfully.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnscientific Mike...You Zonies invade socal worse than killer bees. Glad I left mexifornia and moved to America. Tourists go home...leave your daughters.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJohn...Occam's razor rules. You are correct that simplicity is usually correct. I'm sorry that as the evening wears on, and the level in the whicky bottle drops, I sometimes get too sarcastic. Respect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Virtually no one in psychology has realized that low-level words can give clues to large-scale behaviors"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is not only for words look at other behavior patterns: playing, taking care of your dolls later your children.relationship with the very first group in life and your later relationships the list is endless.
and finally we have a software to analysethat - LIWK.
I like...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHave you ever stopped to think and then forgotten to start?
Any action which requires a choice eventually, when played in the public for approval, will require that it be simplified into easily understood categories. To state that using more ambiguous statements and 'but' and 'except' implies lower level reasoning may be completely incorrect: it may imply that, though the topic is complex, the speaker has synthesized it, and is presenting it in its essence. When writing a persuasive essay, I have observed that my initial drafts are overly long, wordy, and contain many 'exception' phrases. Then, for simplicity's sake, and to be concise, I edit it and hope its not too simple, and that the reader, who is usually quite intelligent, understands some of the implicit arguments, and the arguments that underlie some of the main points, since there exist beneath the surface many, many sub-arguments and views which must be shared.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe value of Scientific American is always expanded when research on matters that affect the general public is presented as clearly as this good work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for all you do and keep it up!
Readers of this article should also keep in mind that the use of words is clearly situational and not some cosmic absolute. This article makes statements that would be contradictory if the reader is unaware of this consideration. As was pointed out several times in the article, the software counts words. It requires an experienced analyst to interpret the meaning of the numbers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's logical that a person's diction, style, grammar correlates strongly with experience, intelligence, and character. Unfortunately, not much of that was revealed in this article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's apparent that qualities like color, concision, directness (use of active verbs) and artful, educated sentence and paragraph construction reveal postive qualities.
More research on this subject could have beneficial effects in many social disciplines.
Those damn tourista are always attacking some place. Can't someone do something about them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI congratulate these researchers for their hard work. They might be interested in knowing that NextStage Evolution has a patented technology that's been doing what's described in this article (and quite a bit more) since 2001. See http://www.bizmediascience.com/2009/06/sentiment_analysis_anyone_part.html for an example.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs an experiment, practice using "and" wherever you would have used "but". You may find that your world transforms. We have the illusion that we know how two things are related. Really, we just know that two things are. Example: "I want to go to the beach, but my car doesn't work." The reality created is that my car's condition determines my visit to the beach. "I want to go to the beach, and my car doesn't work." The reality created is that I'm probably not going to be using my car to get to the beach, but I can find another way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistourist attack - 0n Sci-American?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's so confusing... we can hunt deer during deer season, bear during bear season, so why not tourists during tourist season?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistinmansa,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am soooooo confused too! We squeeze olives to get olive oil, soy beans to get soybean oil, palm kernel to get palm oil, whales to get whale oil, shale to get shale oil.... so where do we get baby oil? And suntan oil? And motor oil? (-:
what is a tourist attack, do the tourist attack, or are they the ones attacked, or was the intellectual trying to say terrorist attacks. This is /Freudian slip, the person is so afraid of terrorists they slipped and said tourists.
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