ads from the three women are equally revealing. Margaret, the fifty-three-year-old woman, says less about her personality traits than about the central values that guide her. Gigi is a storyteller. You know on your first date that she will talk about some of her unique experiences. Even the eccentric story of her malfunctioning car window is part of who she is. And the last woman, Mirah, may not even trust her own views of herself and so tells the readers what other people think of her personality. Even though all of the men and women on these dating sites are consciously marketing themselves, we still snatch a glimpse of who they are.
In addition to revealing something of each person’s identity, the different ads point to the strikingly different ways that people think about personality. The very essence of some people can be their possessions, their occupations, their skills, their traits or dominant characteristics, their values, or their stories.
If you look back at the six personal ads, you will see large disparities in the function words that each person uses. The usual sex differences emerge—women use far more pronouns (especially I-words), auxiliary verbs, and cognitive words. Men use more articles and nouns. But there are large differences even within the men’s and women’s descriptions. For almost every function and emotion word category, each person has a unique pattern of word use. It is these different patterns that provide insights into their worlds.
In all likelihood, those who posted the ads went on dates. They probably shared more about who they were and, in return, expected their dates to divulge information about themselves as well. During the dates, they undoubtedly talked about their daily lives, the recent weather, food, clothes, or other topics that grabbed their attention. Similar discussions can happen on job interviews, when meeting an office mate for the first time, or simply talking to someone at a party. We directly and indirectly share and seek information about personality all the time. One might think, then, that modern-day psychology would have some fast and efficient ways to categorize people’s stories about themselves. One would be wrong.
Studying people’s personalities by listening to what they say is enormously difficult. Everyone’s stories are different in substance and style. In online dating, some write for pages, others include only a sentence or two. How can you compare one person who just lists his occupation and possessions with another who lays out his life goals? How does one even go about organizing and categorizing people’s self-descriptions? Historically, researchers have hired an army of raters to read each self-descriptive essay and then make judgments about the essay writers’ personality, writing style, goals, and interests. The process is slow, unreliable, and very expensive.
Recently, however, my colleagues and others have begun to apply some promising computer solutions to analyzing open-ended personality descriptions. As you might guess, different patterns of function words reveal important parts of people’s personalities and the ways they think.
FINDING PERSONALITY IN FUNCTION WORDS
In the early 1980s, a young graduate student in the linguistics department at the University of Southern California decided to investigate how different literary genres varied in their respective use of language. For example, do literary novels, nonfiction books, plays, mysteries, and even romance novels differ in the ways their authors employ words, grammar, and syntax? The student, Douglas Biber, happened on a statistical method not common in linguistics at the time, called factor analysis (more on that in a moment), and ultimately produced a seminal book titled Variation Across Speech and Writing that answered this question. English scholars, of course, had long been able to tell the difference between a mystery and romance novel—the plots were different. But
In addition to revealing something of each person’s identity, the different ads point to the strikingly different ways that people think about personality. The very essence of some people can be their possessions, their occupations, their skills, their traits or dominant characteristics, their values, or their stories.
If you look back at the six personal ads, you will see large disparities in the function words that each person uses. The usual sex differences emerge—women use far more pronouns (especially I-words), auxiliary verbs, and cognitive words. Men use more articles and nouns. But there are large differences even within the men’s and women’s descriptions. For almost every function and emotion word category, each person has a unique pattern of word use. It is these different patterns that provide insights into their worlds.
In all likelihood, those who posted the ads went on dates. They probably shared more about who they were and, in return, expected their dates to divulge information about themselves as well. During the dates, they undoubtedly talked about their daily lives, the recent weather, food, clothes, or other topics that grabbed their attention. Similar discussions can happen on job interviews, when meeting an office mate for the first time, or simply talking to someone at a party. We directly and indirectly share and seek information about personality all the time. One might think, then, that modern-day psychology would have some fast and efficient ways to categorize people’s stories about themselves. One would be wrong.
Studying people’s personalities by listening to what they say is enormously difficult. Everyone’s stories are different in substance and style. In online dating, some write for pages, others include only a sentence or two. How can you compare one person who just lists his occupation and possessions with another who lays out his life goals? How does one even go about organizing and categorizing people’s self-descriptions? Historically, researchers have hired an army of raters to read each self-descriptive essay and then make judgments about the essay writers’ personality, writing style, goals, and interests. The process is slow, unreliable, and very expensive.
Recently, however, my colleagues and others have begun to apply some promising computer solutions to analyzing open-ended personality descriptions. As you might guess, different patterns of function words reveal important parts of people’s personalities and the ways they think.
FINDING PERSONALITY IN FUNCTION WORDS
In the early 1980s, a young graduate student in the linguistics department at the University of Southern California decided to investigate how different literary genres varied in their respective use of language. For example, do literary novels, nonfiction books, plays, mysteries, and even romance novels differ in the ways their authors employ words, grammar, and syntax? The student, Douglas Biber, happened on a statistical method not common in linguistics at the time, called factor analysis (more on that in a moment), and ultimately produced a seminal book titled Variation Across Speech and Writing that answered this question. English scholars, of course, had long been able to tell the difference between a mystery and romance novel—the plots were different. But
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