Cited by 648Personality Traits and PsychologyMental Health via WritingAuthorship Attribution and Profiling

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 42 of the 42 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 45 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Personality in 100,000 Words: A large-scale analysis of personality and word use among bloggers

Open access
Yarkoni, Tal·2010·Journal of Research in Personality

Abstract

Previous studies have found systematic associations between personality and individual differences in word use. Such studies have typically focused on broad associations between major personality domains and aggregate word categories, potentially masking more specific associations. Here I report the results of a large-scale analysis of personality and word use in a large sample of blogs (N=694). The size of the dataset enabled pervasive correlations with personality to be identified for a broad range of lexical variables, including both aggregate word categories and individual English words. The results replicated category-level findings from previous offline studies, identified numerous novel associations at both a categorical and single-word level, and underscored the value of complementary approaches to the study of personality and word use.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This study analyzed personality and word use in 694 blogs, finding pervasive associations between Big Five traits/facets and both LIWC categories and individual words. It replicated prior offline findings while showing that broad category-level analyses can mask or contradict narrower facet- and word-level associations.

Key findings

  • Of 330 Big Five–LIWC category correlations, 145 (43.9%) were significant at p < .05 and 49 (14.8%) at p < .001; the study replicated 15 of 30 correlations from Pennebaker and King (1999) and 15 of 24 from Hirsh and Peterson (2009).
  • Facet-level analyses found 28.8% of 1,980 facet–LIWC correlations significant at p < .05 and 152 (7.7%) at p < .001, with substantial heterogeneity: Extraversion and Openness showed 42 and 56 heterogeneous categories, respectively.
  • Openness had far more word-level correlates than other traits: it correlated significantly (p < .001) with 393 words, whereas Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness each correlated with fewer than 30 words.
  • Word-level analyses revealed opposite-direction associations within categories, e.g., Agreeableness correlated positively with affection words like “loves,” “love,” and “hug” (all ρ ≥ .2, p < .001) but negatively with “porn,” “gay,” and “fuck” (all ρ < −.21, p < .001).

Methods

  • Naturalistic sample of 694 blogs (524 female; mean age = 36.2 years, range 18–78, SD = 11.7), recruited via Google Blog Search and email; blogs averaged 115,423 words and spanned a mean of 23.9 months.
  • Personality was measured with the 50-item IPIP NEO-FFI for Big Five traits (N = 576) and the 300-item IPIP NEO-PI-R for 30 facets (N = 431); language was analyzed with LIWC 2001 across 66 categories and with normalized counts of the 5,608 most frequent words.
  • Analyses used Spearman rank correlations; word-level analyses included only blogs with ≥50,000 words (N = 406), used p < .001 thresholding, and applied split-half reliability and False Discovery Rate checks.

Limitations

  • The paper states likely selection bias: only a small proportion of bloggers publicly display email addresses and only a fraction agreed to participate, potentially restricting personality variance and ruling out direct comparison with the general population.
  • The paper states that many correlations were modest (largest LIWC–Big Five correlation = .23; mean absolute significant correlation = .14) and that all language variables were simple word counts, ignoring context, irony, images, and higher-order semantics.
  • Evident from the text: the sample was three-quarters female, included only Google Blogger blogs, relied on self-report personality, and was correlational, so causal and generalizability claims are constrained.

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Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.jrp.2010.04.001

Cites

42 of 42 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

48 Own result · 22 Not checked yet · 20 Own interpretation · 11 Own method · 4 No basis given

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Show all 64 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 9
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 35
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 1
41 of 41
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Bloggers were unaware that their writing would be analyzed in relation to personality at the time of writing.

    “Because bloggers were free to write about any topic of their choosing and were (at the time of writing) unaware that their writing would be analyzed in relation to personality, the data provided an naturalistic window into the influence of personality on language use that could not be influenced by demand characteristics.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The blog content analyzed was authored by the participant blogger themselves.

    “The contents of participants' blogs were subsequently downloaded and parsed using a set of custom scripts written in the Ruby programming language.”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    Bloggers who participated had systematically different personalities from those who did not.

    “It is reasonable to suppose that bloggers who participated had systematically different personalities from those who did not (e.g., they might be more Agreeable or Open).”
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Metadata

Authors
Yarkoni, T.
Affiliations
University of Colorado Boulder (US)
Corresponding author
Yarkoni, Tal
Venue
Journal of Research in Personality
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2010-06
Volume
44
Issue
3
Pages
363-373
ISSN
0092-6566 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W1973871257
Cited by
637
References
41
Citations by year
2026: 54 · 2025: 40 · 2024: 41 · 2023: 39 · 2022: 57 · 2021: 73 · 2020: 56 · 2019: 62 · 2018: 37 · 2017: 44 · 2016: 32 · 2015: 29 · 2014: 25 · 2013: 22 · 2012: 15
FWCI
16.82
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Journal of Research in Personality (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • National Institutes of Health
  • National Institute of Nursing Research (F32NR012081)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health via Writing
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Authorship Attribution and Profiling
Keywords
personality, word usage, bloggers, English vocabulary, language and personality, replication

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