Video Recordings

By analyzing the ways people use pronouns, prepositions, and other almost-invisible function words, it is possible to better understand their underlying social, personality, and psychological processes. Drawing on dozens of experiments and large-scale social media studies, we can identify word use associated with changes in status and leadership, deception, stress, thinking styles, social connections, and other states over time and culture. Pennebaker will discuss recent research on tracking the language changes of people dealing with COVID, cultural movements associated with nationalism and polarization, and the language of leaders intent on going to war. Advantages and shortcomings of using a social psychological approach based on text analytic methods will be discussed.