Psychology of Language
The first test I tried was the I-Test. I answered eight of the ten questions correctly. The errors I made were thinking that leaders would use the “I” word more than followers, and that liars would use the “I” word more than people who were telling the truth. When I was answering those questions, I was thinking that people in those situations would be using that pronoun to make them feel better – leaders trying to build their own sense of primacy over the situation and liars trying to establish the fact that they were actually being honest by building a personal connection between themselves and the statement in question (Robb 2014). However, the truth is that when people use the first person pronoun they are reflecting their close connection to it, rather than trying to establish or project a close connection to it (Pennebaker 2011). That is why, according to the research, people who tell the truth or have taken a personal interest in listening to a leader (in the case of the follower) are more likely to use the first-person pronoun.
The next test I took was the “Analyze Words” test, in which I entered my friend’s Twitter handle. This tool takes a look at the way in which the Twitter user uses those 140 characters in each tweet and puts them through an algorithm that links them to personality traits. My friend (who is a 44-year-old male who happens to teach high school) was rated as upbeat and angry as far as emotional style goes. His worry level was average, and his depression level was low. It kind of surprised me to see that someone could be listed as both upbeat and angry. However, then I looked that the “social style” field. He was rated high in being personable, being arrogant/distant, and in being a spacy/valley girl type of person. I would have described him as personable and (sometimes) a little aloof, but not spacy – but I guess that’s how algorithms go sometimes. The part that I found the most insightful about him was the “Thinking Style” section, in which he rated very high (85 out of 100) when it came to being analytic. He was rated average for being in-the-moment and low for being sensory. He is one of the most analytical people I know, so that made a lot of sense to me.
The final test I did was the LIFE survey. I was moderate in both the “Suburbanite” and the “Slacker” spectra, which meant that I am somewhere about halfway between living a conventional lifestyle and living an unconventional lifestyle, as far as keeping my life and my surroundings organized and clean, as well as being mostly family oriented and healthy in the way I live my life. In the “Slacker” spectrum, this means that I like games and computers but don’t have an obsession. I like to take risks sometimes but generally live a healthy lifestyle. Both of these evaluations seemed to make sense to me. I thought that my “4” on the “Cultured” spectrum (which runs from 1 to 13) seemed low, but it has been a while since I have been to an art museum. I have been to some literary readings, but that was not part of the questionnaire. The fourth measure is “Preppie” – but while I got a moderate score, I think that had to do more with the fact that I make to-do lists than the way that I dress myself, based on the explanation, which made sense to me.
References
Pennebaker, J. (2011). Your use of pronouns reveals your personality. Harvard Business Review
Robb, A. (2014). People use fewer first-person pronouns as they get older. New Republic 30
