The hidden ways your language betrays your character
f you overheard a conversation on a bus, do you think you could tell from the words that were used and the topics discussed, the personality of the people who were chatting? What about if I showed you a short story? Could you glean something about the character of the author from their language?
We’re often reminded “choose your words carefully” – well it turns out the words themselves may reveal far more than what we’re actually trying to say. There’s mounting evidence that our personality is written, quite literally, in the language that we use, from the tweets we send to our choice of email address.
But introverts and extroverts also use language very differently. A few years ago, a group of researchers led by Camiel Beukeboom at VU University, Amsterdam, asked a group of 40 volunteers to look at photos of different social situations and describe out loud what was going on. They found that extroverts’ language tended to be more abstract and “loose”, while introverts spoke in more concrete terms. In other words, introverts tend to be a lot more specific.
Extroverts say: “This article is excellent”
Introverts say: “This article is very informative”