By the early 1990s, I was attending more and more international conferences. If the speakers were from Europe, their graphs and tables always included class information but not race. The Americans were just the opposite. By the mid-1990s, however, something shifted. Statisticians started remarking that the effects of social class in the United States were often stronger than the effects of race. Indeed, in the last decade, a dizzying number of studies have shown powerful effects of class on smoking, drinking, depression, obesity, and every physical and mental health problem you can imagine.
Social class is generally measured by years of education that people have completed and their yearly income. You might think that lower social class is associated with health problems because poorer people don’t have access to health care. In fact, the exact same social class effects are found in Sweden and other countries where health care is universal. Social class is linked to almost everything we do—the foods we buy, the movies we see, the people we vote for, and the ways we raise our children. And, predictably, the ways we use function words.
Over the last forty years, a smattering of studies have pointed to social class differences in language development, vocabulary, and even language patterns in the home. None to my knowledge have examined language differences among large samples of adults. Recently, my colleagues David Beaver, a linguist, and Gary Lavergne, a researcher in the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) Office of Admissions, and I teamed up to study the admissions essays that high school students write in order to gain access to college. UT-Austin is a selective undergraduate institution and recruits about seven thousand top students each year. In addition to writing two essays, applicants must also complete a large number of surveys in order to be considered for admission. Among other things, students are asked to supply information about their families’ social class—including education of parents and estimated parental income. Examining the data for four consecutive years allowed us to study the social class–language connection with over twenty-five thousand students.
The table on the next page should be somewhat familiar. Students coming from higher social classes tended to use bigger words, more articles (and nouns), and more prepositions. Students from lower social classes tended to be more personal in their admissions essays, using more pronouns, auxiliary verbs, present-tense verbs, and cognitive mechanism words (many of which are associated with hedges).
Statistically, these are very large effects. The patterns are identical for males and females, and younger and older applicants. Also, these are all smart and motivated students. Why are there social class differences in function word use? Clearly, something about the students’ upbringing and life experiences is influencing their word choices.
One promising idea is that there are differences in language use within families of differing social classes from the beginning. There is some preliminary research to support this idea. Perhaps the most cited and overinterpreted study was one done by Betty Hart and Todd Risley in the mid-1980s. In their study, thirteen professional families, twenty-three working-class families, and six families on welfare were tape-recorded in their midwestern homes for an hour once a month for over two years. When the study started, most of the children were under a year old. The tape recordings were carefully transcribed and all the words of the children and adults were counted.
The authors discovered that children in the poorest families were exposed to fewer than half as many words as those from the professional families. Those in the working-class families were in between. By the end of the study, children in the professional families had vocabularies (based on the recordings) that were twice as large as those of the welfare families’ children. On the surface, this was an impressive study. However, even the authors agree that the results should be interpreted with caution. For example, there were only six families in the lowest social class group. In addition, all the professional families had at least one parent who was a faculty member and almost all were white. In all likelihood, the professional families felt quite comfortable having students in their house every month recording what they said. The welfare families, on the other hand, were all African-American and likely had a very different view of the study than those in the professional families. For example, the lower-class families may well have been more suspicious of the experimenters and may have avoided talking on the recording days.
It is likely that the verbal experiences of children brought up in lower-class families are different from those brought up in wealthier, more highly educated families. Why this might result in different patterns of function word usage may be related to issues of power and status.
SPEAKING OF SEX, AGE, AND SOCIAL CLASS: THE SOUND OF POWER
In this chapter, two groups of words repeatedly emerge. The first, which we will call the noun cluster, includes articles, nouns, prepositions, and big words. The second will be referred to as the pronoun-verb cluster. It is composed of personal and impersonal pronouns (especially first-person singular), auxiliary verbs, and certain cognitive words frequently linked to hedge phrases. Men, older people, and higher social classes all use noun clusters at high rates; women, younger people, and lower social classes use pronoun-verb clusters at high rates. Most simple hypotheses to explain these differences fall apart at some point. For example, one might argue that people who are more verbal might be drawn to, say, pronoun-verb words. This might be true for women and older people but not lower social classes. Perhaps those high in noun clusters simply read more and are exposed to more words—again, this might work for older people and higher social classes but not men.
The simplest explanation is that people higher in power and status are drawn to noun clusters and people lower in power and status rely on pronouns and verbs. For the sake of argument, why would those with more authority use more noun-related words? And, equally important, why would lower levels of power be associated with the use of more verbs and pronouns?
One solution is to consider what power and status buy. Adam Galinsky, a researcher in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, has conducted a number of studies where people either think they have power in a group or think they don’t. If they believe they control their fate, they are much more likely to make decisions on their own and ignore others’ ideas. Those with less power are easily swayed by others. In short, if you don’t have power in a situation, it is in your best interests to pay attention to others. But if you are the boss, you should pay close attention to the task at hand.
As noted in the last chapter, when people are task focused, they don’t pay attention to themselves. Most tasks, in fact, require a clear awareness of the objects, events, and concrete features that are necessary to accomplish the task goals. Much like the two people with the artificially high testosterone levels, task-focused people are able to make decisions without human relationships getting in the way.
While signaling less status, the use of pronouns and verbs also suggests that speakers are more socially oriented. Most pronouns are, by definition, social. Words such as we, you, she, and they tell us that the speaker is aware of and thinking about other human beings. First-person singular pronouns are a bit different in that they signal self-attention. Indeed, in later chapters, we summarize evidence suggesting that humans (and nonhuman mammals) tend to pay more attention to themselves in settings where they are subordinate to more powerful others. Why verbs in general and auxiliary verbs in particular may signal lower power is not entirely clear. Auxiliary verbs (such as is, have, do) are generally part of a passive way of speaking: “He was hit by the ball” as opposed to the more active “The ball hit him.”
The similarity in word use across age, sex, and social class is only a small part of the puzzle of function words and social psychology. Being a woman or a man, young or old, rich or poor is only a small part of our identities. We have just glimpsed the language of who we are. In the next chapter, we dig more deeply into the individual psychology of each of us.
CHAPTER 4
Personality: Finding the Person Within
WHO ARE YOU? You, yes, you—the one reading these words right now—are the sum of your traits, values, stories, skills, job, friends, relationships, material possessions, and, of course, the words you use. Stop for a second and think how you would describe yourself to a stranger. Be careful, however. In this chapter, you will see how your choice of function words reveals more than you might guess.
Most online dating services encourage their members to write something revealing about themselves on their websites. As it happens, my students and I have collected a few thousand such self-descriptions in our research. Some examples:
I’m a nice person. Very down to earth. Drama-free. Hard worker. Caring. Honest. Sympathetic. Supportive. Intuitive. Inquisitive. Curious. I’m not superficial. I don’t keep superficial relationships. Got great friends and a good life.
—Juan, 27-year-old male
I have a great build. I am a good cook, have a fantastic job, home owner, exceptional morals, good decision maker, non smoker, no baggage and marriage minded. I love biking, kayaking, swimming, jet skis, hiking, snowboarding, rollerblading, horseback riding. I also have a great interest in music, movies, plays, comedy clubs etc.
—Marcus, 39-year-old male
Father of two girls. I have a house, truck, dogs, kids. like to be outside and love football and my girls.
—Tony, 31-year-old male
* * *
I am a romantic, enthusiastic, passionate and fun-loving woman. Immensely important to me are family, friends, kindness, integrity and especially laughter. I balance my dedication to my work with my spiritual life through daily meditations and a healthy lifestyle. I celebrate every day.
—Margaret, 53-year-old female
I consider myself a very eclectic individual. I can have fun almost anywhere and will try anything once … (except maybe country line dancing). I’ve had some unique experiences in my life and will continue to explore what life has to offer. I dig antiques, knitting and crocheting, and my 13 year old car that I refuse to let go despite the fact that my window is temperamental and only rolls down when it feels like it and I have to tape some wires together for my brake lights to work. I’m a makeup artist so naturally there’s a girly girl side to me.
—Gigi, 31-year-old female
The people who know me best consider me to be a warm-hearted, generous friend, independent, resourceful, but a bit stubborn at times.
—Mirah, 34-year-old female
Reading personal ads is a little like watching parts of movies. Each description tells a story about the writer both in what is said and in how it is said. For example, compare the first three men. Juan, the twenty-seven-year-old, describes himself in traditional personality dimensions that are inherently social—honest, sympathetic, supportive. And then he ends with a factual statement that he has great friends. The thirty-nine-year-old Marcus describes himself by his actions and possessions. There is no sense of his emotions or connections with others. But he does have a great build. The description by the thirty-one-year-old Tony is oddly poignant. In a handful of words, he conveys a socially isolated life with his few possessions, his dogs, but, most important, his daughters.
The 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 Biber’s computer-based method suggested that romance novels were more personal, as measured by pronoun use, and relied more on present-tense verbs than mysteries and other genres. In fact, he found that virtually every genre had its own unique linguistic profile.
I came across Biber’s book in the mid-1990s and was fascinated by this thinking. Although he focused on ways to distinguish great and not-so-great literature by analyzing parts of speech, there was no reason that someone couldn’t distinguish people in the same way by looking at their writing. About this time, I teamed up with a former colleague of mine, Laura King, from the University of Missouri, who is among the most creative personality psychologists in the world. Whereas Biber analyzed words in books to distinguish genres of literature, Laura and I wondered if we could use people’s everyday writing to distinguish genres of people. That is, do different writing styles reflect different personalities?
The first step was to get hundreds, even thousands of writing samples from people who were all writing on the same general topic. By good fortune, I routinely teach a large introductor
y psychology class every year. At the beginning of each semester, my students are introduced to the nature of consciousness and thinking. One of the pioneers of modern-day psychology, William James, wrote extensively in 1890 about the nature of thought—likening it to a stream. One thought or feeling naturally leads to another, which then leads to another. Each thought or sensation stimulates the next, which may be completely unrelated to a thought that appeared a minute earlier or might occur a minute later. Further, as James noted, as our minds float down the stream of consciousness we can be aware of only a single thought at a time.
Since James, many researchers have experimented with stream of consciousness by having people either talk or write continuously about their thoughts as they occur. For many years now, I have required my students to track their thoughts in writing for twenty minutes to give them a better understanding of William James and the nature of consciousness. Although the exercise is required and students submit their writing online, their writing is not graded. We now have almost eight thousand essays that students have given us permission to use for research.
The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us Page 8