The Secret Life of Pronouns_ What Our Words Say About Us - James W. Pennebaker [137]
167 I love performatives. Not only are they psychologically interesting but they are at the center of some eye-opening debates in philosophy. Check out the work of the philosopher John Searle and also John L. Austin.
168 Although not discussed here, another verbal feature of deception is the use of words such as um or er. A recent article by Joanne Arciuli and her colleagues is worth reading. Also, see Michael Erard’s book Um.
CHAPTER 7. THE LANGUAGE OF STATUS, POWER, AND LEADERSHIP
176 Recall that pronouns tell us where people are paying attention. Many of the pronoun effects we see with humans match the gaze finding among nonhuman primates. For a delightful analysis of status hierarchies in chimpanzees, see the work of Frans De Waal. In humans, visual cues to dominance have been discussed by Jack Dovidio and his colleagues.
188–189 John Dean, personal communications, August 30, 2002.
190 I’m indebted to Ethan Burris and his colleagues for allowing us to reanalyze their data for this project.
192 The leadership literature has grown increasingly complex. To get a flavor of some of the directions, see the pioneering work of Fred Fiedler. A summary of research dealing with leadership among women and men is best captured by Alice Eagly and her colleagues. David Waldman and his group have done a nice job of examining leadership attributes.
194 Another example of language shifts across languages and cultures was discovered by Doug Sofer as part of his dissertation. He found that the use of the first-person singular in letters to the presidents of the South American country Colombia between 1944 and 1958 differed by social class. As you might guess, the lower the social class of the author, the higher their use of I-words. See also the seminal work of Howard Giles on accommodation theory, a framework for understanding when people shift in their language to match their interaction partners.
194 Thanks to George Theodoridis for his observations on Ancient Greek language (personal communication, November 6, 2009).
195 Note that there are other language dimensions that we find to be linked to status. Although the effects are modest, people with lower status tend to use the following word categories more: negations, impersonal pronouns, tentative words, swear words.
CHAPTER 8: THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE
197–198 The IM interaction was part of the Slatcher and Pennebaker (2006) project. The on-air fight between Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Rosie O’Donnell that follows had been brewing for several months. O’Donnell had already announced that she was leaving the show in three weeks. The overall interaction between the two women evidenced a language style matching (or LSM) score of .94—which is exceedingly high.
202–204 The research on the mirror neuron system continues to be controversial. There is an increasing number of studies that demonstrate highly specialized brain activity in Broca’s area that reflects behavioral mimicking. The primary objection about the mirror neuron approach is that no consistent theory or model explains how it works or how it is related to cognitive activity. Particularly interesting papers are available by Rizzolatti and Craighero (2004), Kimberly Montgomery and her colleagues (2009), and Kotz et al. (2010).
207 The LSM project dealing with liars was conducted by Hancock, Curry, Goorha, and Woodworth (2008). For a report on additional text analyses of the same data, see Duran, Hall, McCarthy, and McNamara (2010).
208 Despite the intuitive appeal of multitasking, the evidence is clear that it is not an effective technique to accomplish even moderately complex tasks. A particularly convincing case of the downside of multitasking has been published by Ophir, Nass, and Wagner (2009).
211 The speed-dating project had a complicated history. Paul Eastwick, a faculty member at Texas A&M, visited our department in the spring of 2010