The DOI matches its Crossref record; 136 of the 137 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Psychological Aspects of Natural Language Use: Our Words, Our Selves
Abstract
The words people use in their daily lives can reveal important aspects of their social and psychological worlds. With advances in computer technology, text analysis allows researchers to reliably and quickly assess features of what people say as well as subtleties in their linguistic styles. Following a brief review of several text analysis programs, we summarize some of the evidence that links natural word use to personality, social and situational fluctuations, and psychological interventions. Of particular interest are findings that point to the psychological value of studying particles—parts of speech that include pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctives, and auxiliary verbs. Particles, which serve as the glue that holds nouns and regular verbs together, can serve as markers of emotional state, social identity, and cognitive styles.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“From a psycholinguistic perspective, there is a relationship between word usage and personality, social conditions, and consequently emotional states [120].”
From Online grooming detection: A comprehensive survey of child exploitation in chat logs (2023) · cites this paper as [120]
In the citing paper
“Even if such words might not be useful for certain analyses, for other applications they may embed useful signals about e.g., authorship and/or emotional states (Pennebaker et al., 2003; Saif et al., 2014), threatening as a result the research validity (Denny and Spirling, 2016).”
From Social Data: Biases, Methodological Pitfalls, and Ethical Boundaries (2019) · cites this paper as Pennebaker et al., 2003
In the citing paper
“Language can re fl ect these affective, cognitive, perceptual, and other psychological processes of individuals, including changes over time around speci fi c events (school shooter drills in our case) (Pennebaker et al., 2003).”
From Impacts of school shooter drills on the psychological well-being of American K-12 school communities: a social media study (2021) · cites this paper as Pennebaker et al., 2003
In the citing paper
“We take this as a proxy for social integration [19], suggesting the increasing importance of friendships and relationships as people age.”
From Personality, Gender, and Age in the Language of Social Media: The Open-Vocabulary Approach (2013) · cites this paper as [19]
In the citing paper
“It remains unclear to what extent the results of such studies generalize to less constrained real-world situations where people's personalities can influence not only how they write or talk about specific topics, but also what topics they choose to write or talk about (cf. Pennebaker, Mehl, & Niederhoffer, 2003).”
From Personality in 100,000 Words: A large-scale analysis of personality and word use among bloggers (2010) · cites this paper as Pennebaker, Mehl, & Niederhoffer, 2003
Citations
Cites
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
Naegele, K. D., & Goffman, E. (1956) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2089106 · Cited by 26,049
James, W. (1891) · Personality Culture Society · doi:10.1037/11059-000 · Cited by 25,876
Grice, H. P. (1975) · Speech Acts · doi:10.1163/9789004368811_003 · Cited by 23,221
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Goffman, E. (2023) · Routledge eBooks · doi:10.4324/9781003320609-59 · Cited by 17,564
Politeness : Some Universals in Language Usage
Brown, P. (1987) · Cited by 11,901
Weber, R. (1990) · doi:10.4135/9781412983488 · Cited by 7,750
Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior.
Tiryakian, E. A., & Goffman, E. (1968) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2091926 · Cited by 7,498
Optimism, coping, and health: Assessment and implications of generalized outcome expectancies.
Scheier, M. F., & Carver, C. S. (1985) · Health Psychology · doi:10.1037/0278-6133.4.3.219 · Cited by 6,690
Landauer, T. K., & Dumais, S. T. (1997) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.104.2.211 · Cited by 6,282
Variation across Speech and Writing
Biber, D. (1988) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511621024 · Cited by 5,227
Research works printed but not linked: 34
- 10.1037//0022-3514.70.5.996 · DOI
- 10.1037//0022-3514.79.4.631 · DOI
- Bucci W, 1981, Bull. Menninger Clin., 45, 334
- Campbell RS, 2002, Psychol. Sci.
- Coupland N, Coupland J. 2001. Language, ageing, and ageism. SeeRobinson & Giles 2001, pp. 465–86
- Eckert P, 1999, Language Variation as Social Practice: The Linguistic Construction of Identity in Belten High.
- Furnham A. 1990. Language and personality. In Handbook of Language and Social Psychology , ed. H Giles, WP Robinson, pp. 73–95. New York: Wiley
- Giles H, 1991, Language: Contexts and Consequences.
- Gortner EM, 2002, J. Soc. Clin. Psychol.
- 10.1037//0033-2909.86.3.616 · DOI
- Hart RP. 2001. Redeveloping DICTION: theoretical considerations. SeeWest 2001, pp. 43–60 · DOI
- Hogenraad R, 1995, J. Soc. Behav. Personal., 10, 491
- 10.1037//0033-2909.88.3.614 · DOI
- Jeanneau M. 1991. Word pattern and psychological structure: empirical studies of words and expressions related to personality organization . PhD thesis. Dep. Applied Psychol., Umeå Univ., Sweden
- 10.1037//0033-295X.104.2.211 · DOI · Paper page
- Lepore SJ, 2002, The Writing Cure.
- McCarthy D, 1929, J. Genet. Psychol., 36, 583
- Mehrabian A, 1971, J. Exp. Res. Personal., 5, 64
- Miller G, 1995, The Science of Words.
- 10.1093/hcr/27.1.121 · DOI
- Newman ML, 2002, Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull.
- 10.1037//0021-843X.95.3.274 · DOI
- Pennebaker JW, 2001, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC): LIWC 2001.
- 10.1037//0022-3514.77.6.1296 · DOI · Paper page
- 10.1037//0022-3514.72.4.863 · DOI · Paper page
- 10.1037//0278-6133.4.3.219 · DOI · Paper page
- Scherer K. 1979. Personality markers in speech. SeeSherer & Giles 1979, pp. 147–209
- Scherwitz L, Canick J. 1988. Self reference and coronary heart disease risk. In Type A Behavior Pattern: Research, Theory, and Intervention , ed. K Houston, CR Snyder, pp. 146–67. New York: Wiley
- Scherwitz L, 1985, Advances, 2, 6
- Sebeok TA, 1960, Style and Language.
- 10.1207/153248302760179101 · DOI
- Tannen D, 1994, Gender Discourse.
- Winter DG, 1973, The Power Motive.
- 10.1037//0003-066X.43.9.673 · DOI
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Items 1,001–1,010 of 1,010
Jiao, H., Wang, L., & Yang, J. (2023) · Technovation · doi:10.1016/j.technovation.2023.102871 · Cited by 18
The paucity of morality in everyday talk
Atari, M., Mehl, M. R., Graham, J., Doris, J. M., Schwarz, N., Davani, A. M., Omrani, A., Kennedy, B., Gonzalez, E., Jafarzadeh, N., et al. (2023) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-023-32711-4 · Cited by 17
Self-citationGibbs, J. L., Kim, H., & Boyraz, M. (2017) · The International Encyclopedia of Organizational Communication · doi:10.1002/9781118955567.wbieoc215 · Cited by 16
Combining psycho-linguistic, content-based and chat-based features to detect predation in chatrooms
Barreiro, A., Losada, D. E., & Parapar, J. (2014) · Verlag der Technischen Universität Graz · doi:10.3217/jucs-020-02-0213 · Cited by 16
Neurocognitive Correlates of Resilience in Late-Life Depression
Laird, K. T., Lavretsky, H., Wu, P., Krause, B., & Siddarth, P. (2019) · The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry · doi:10.1016/j.jagp.2018.08.009 · Cited by 14
Micro-narratives: A Scalable Method for Eliciting Stories of People’s Lived Experience
Skeggs, A., Mehta, A., Yap, V., Ibrahim, S. B., Rhodes, C., Gross, J. J., Munson, S. A., Klasnja, P., Orben, A., & Slovak, P. (2025) · Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3706598.3713999 · Cited by 14
Context- and subgroup-specific language changes in individuals who develop PTSD after trauma
Todorov, G., Mayilvahanan, K., Cain, C., & Cunha, C. (2020) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00989 · Cited by 13
Linguistic predictors of psychological adjustment in healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic
Castiglioni, M., Caldiroli, C. L., Negri, A., Manzoni, G. M., & Procaccia, R. (2023) · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · doi:10.3390/ijerph20054482 · Cited by 12
Bartal, A., Jagodnik, K. M., Chan, S. J., Babu, M. S., & Dekel, S. (2022) · doi:10.1101/2022.08.30.22279394 · Cited by 44
“studies have demonstrated that the way in which individuals recall and narrate traumatic events, including the narrative language, relates to their post-traumatic stress symptom expression.(28,31-33) This suggests that the words describing individuals’ narrative of the traumatic event, which .”
Use of Promotional Language in Grant Applications and Grant Success
Qiu, H. S., Peng, H., Fosse, H. B., Woodruff, T. K., & Uzzi, B. (2024) · JAMA Network Open · doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.48696 · Cited by 5
Metadata
- Authors
- Pennebaker, J. W., Mehl, M. R., & Niederhoffer, K. G.
- Affiliations
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- Venue
- Annual Review of Psychology
- Publisher
- Annual Reviews
- Published
- 2003-02
- Volume
- 54
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 547-577
- ISSN
- 0066-4308 (ISSN-L)
- 1545-2085
- OpenAlex
- W2100772444
- Cited by
- 2,624
- References
- 137
- Citations by year
- 2026: 158 · 2025: 149 · 2024: 167 · 2023: 174 · 2022: 166 · 2021: 159 · 2020: 165 · 2019: 163 · 2018: 157 · 2017: 139 · 2016: 151 · 2015: 129 · 2014: 136 · 2013: 97 · 2012: 116
- FWCI
- 3.94
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Annual Review of Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- CLOK (University of Central Lancashire) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH052391, MH52391)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health via Writing
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Authorship Attribution and Profiling
- Social Sciences › General Social Sciences › Computational and Text Analysis Methods
- Keywords
- natural language use, text analysis, personality, language style, particles, parts of speech, pronouns, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, emotional state, social identity, cognitive style, psychological intervention, self-representation
- MeSH terms
- Artificial Intelligence, Emotions, Health Status, Humans, Individuality, Interpersonal Relations, Mental Health, Natural Language Processing, Personality, Psycholinguistics, Semantics, Social Environment, Verbal Behavior
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
