Linked In

It used to be concerns about posting that embarrassing photo or regret over a comment you made that may have unintentionally insulted your best friend. On work-related platforms, like LinkedIn, your posts could impact your reputation. Now navigating the intricacies of social media is going to get even harder.
 
Research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that we can determine an individual’s personality traits by the language they use on these platforms.

Specifically, the researchers examined the written language of 66,732 Facebook users as well as scores on a personality test they had undertaken. The personality test determines whether they are agreeable, conscientious, extraverted, emotional stable, and open to experience.

Individuals who were less conscientious used words such as ‘hate’, ‘why’, and ‘dead’ whilst their conscientious counterparts used words like ‘weekend’, ‘enjoying’, and ‘great’.

Emotionally stable individuals used words such as ‘workout’, ‘game’, and ‘the’. Moody individuals tended to use words like ‘really’, ‘stupid’, and ‘sick’ in their posts. 

These findings are, perhaps, not surprising to psychologists who work in the area of language psychology. It is long been understood that what we say isn’t always as important as how we say it.

For example, research shows that individuals who are depressed are more likely to use ‘I’ than ‘we’. However, after experiencing a shared trauma, such as the death of Princess Diana, the use of the word ‘we’ dramatically increases in media.

When trying to be more polite, individuals use more abstract and ambiguous language than specific and tangible language. For example, when you say ‘shut the door!’, it is more direct and unambiguous than saying, ‘can you shut the door?’.

I wonder if today’s blog says more about me than I want to reveal?