Does Word Use Correlate with Self- and Acquaintance Personality Ratings?  

Fast, L. A., & Funder, D. C. (2008). Personality as manifest in word use: Correlations with self-report, acquaintance report, and behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(2), 334–346. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.94.2.334

In this article, the authors detail a study that aimed to identify categories of word use indicative of personality. The authors provide a detailed overview of the evidence base concerning various categories of word use and personality in the psycholinguistic literature. The authors collected data from 511 undergraduate students (181 target participants 330 acquaintances); the participants described themselves and had two acquaintances describe them along 100 personality characteristics. The authors then correlated word use with a 1-hr life history interview for participants. The authors conducted textual analysis to examine the word usage using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program. The results showed that several categories of word use correlated with self- and acquaintance personality ratings and behavior—some of which had not been examined—suggesting strong relationships between word use and personality. The authors suggest that word use may be a viable source of data in personality assessment.  

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