Personality and language use in self-narratives

Social and personality psychologists have recently begun examining patterns of natural language use in relation to psychological phenomena. One domain of interest has been the relationships between individual differences in personality and the types of words that people use. The current study extends this research by examining the association between personality traits and language use in the production of self-narratives. Ninety-four undergraduate students were led through an automated writing program that facilitated the telling of the past and the planning of the future. Word usage was categorized using James Pennebaker’s Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) text-analysis software. Individual differences in the frequency of word use within these categories were correlated with measures of the Big Five personality traits. Every one of the Big Five was strongly and significantly associated with word use patterns theoretically appropriate to the trait, indicating strong connections between language use and personality.