For instance, when we analyzed poems by writers who committed suicide versus poems by those who didn’t, we thought we’d find more dark and negative content words in the suicides’ poetry. Pennebaker: When we began analyzing people’s writing and speech, we didn’t expect results like this. The challenge: Can insignificant words really provide a “window to the soul”? Professor Pennebaker, defend your research. After analyzing 400,000 texts-including essays by college students, instant messages between lovers, chat room discussions, and press conference transcripts-he concluded that function words are important keys to someone’s psychological state and reveal much more than content words do. The research: In the 1990s, James Pennebaker helped develop a computer program that counted and categorized words in texts, differentiating content words, which convey meaning, from function words. The finding: A person’s use of function words-the pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs that are the connective tissue of language-offers deep insights into his or her honesty, stability, and sense of self.
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