Study: Bloggers’ words revealing
Words convey meaning, but our choice of specific words also conveys details about our personalities, new research shows. For example, extroverts are likely to use the word “mouth” frequently, and “open” personalities are likely to use words like “folk,” “poetry” and “universe” in their blogs.
In one of the largest studies on the matter to date, Tal Yarkoni, a psychology and neuroscience postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder, explores what our written words reveal about us.
His work also rebuts the widely held belief that people can maintain distinctly different offline and online personalities. Yarkoni’s research was published in the Journal of Research in Personality and was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Several previous studies have identified a nexus between language usage and personality. But prior studies used writing or speech samples that were more limited in size and focused on relatively broad dimensions of personality.
The “Big Five” personality traits are openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. For those showing neuroticism, the top five were “awful,” “though,” “lazy,” “worse” and “depressing.” Among extroverts, top hits were “bar,” “other,” “drinks,” “restaurant” and “dancing.” Among those showing openness, the top five were “folk,” “humans,” “of,” “poet” and “art.” Agreeable personalities most often used the words “wonderful,” “together,” “visiting,” “morning” and “spring.” And conscientious personalities most frequently used “completed,” “adventure,” “stupid,” “boring” and “adventures.”
Faculty named AAAS fellows
Two University of Colorado at Boulder faculty members have been elected 2010 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The new AAAS fellows are Professor William “Ned” Friedman of the ecology and evolutionary biology department and Professor Veronica Bierbaum of the chemistry and biochemistry department, the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy and JILA, a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
According to AAAS officials, Bierbaum was honored for distinguished contributions to the field of mass spectrometry through pioneering research, innovative teaching and dedicated editorial and administrative service. Friedman was honored for important contributions to the study of angiosperm evolutionary development biology.
Their official induction will take place on Feb. 19 at the 2011 AAAS annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Fertile women like macho faces
According to a recent study, women who do not have quintessentially masculine partners are more likely to fantasize about such men during their fertile phase than women who are actually paired with masculine-looking men.
And women with masculine partners do not necessarily become more attracted to their partners, the study found. Meanwhile, a man’s intelligence has no effect on the extent to which fertile, female partners fantasize about others, the researchers said.
The findings augment the emerging understanding of how human sexual selection evolved over time, and how the vestiges of that evolution are evident today. The study, published recently in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, was conducted by Steven Gangestad and Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico and Christine Garver-Apgar, a postdoctoral fellow at CU’s Institute for Behavioral Genetics.
The team interviewed 66 heterosexual couples in which women’s ages ranged from 18 to 44. Their relationships ranged from one month to 20 years in length. Nine couples were married.
While it is not surprising that women’s gazes would fall on masculine-looking men when they are most fertile, Garver-Apgar says the lack of a similar effect with intelligence is perplexing.
“That we didn’t find any effect of men’s intelligence on their partners’ sexual interests across the cycle is important because some evidence suggests that intelligence associates with genetic quality,” she said.
