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to describe some speed-dating research he had been doing with a colleague of his, Eli Finkel, who is at Northwestern. Molly Ireland was fascinated by his talk and asked if he would be interested in applying the LSM methodology to the speed-dating transcripts. Within a few days, Molly’s analyses yielded the remarkable finding that LSM in speed-dating conversations was a powerful predictor of later dates. Molly then added the speed-dating analyses to Richard Slatcher’s IM project (see p. 212) and, in record time, submitted the paper to a top journal, where it was accepted and published. The resulting paper is Ireland, Slatcher, Eastwick, Scissors, Finkel, and Pennebaker (2011).

212–215 The IM project was initially published as Slatcher and Pennebaker (2006) and then, with the reanalyses of the data, as Ireland, Slatcher, et al. (2011).

216 John Gottman’s research on relationships has a number of practical applications for making good marriages. In addition to his books and articles, New York Times writer Tara Parker-Pope has written a balanced book on marriage and relationships that relies on some of the most recent research.

218–223 The analyses of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, and Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were part of a paper published by Molly Ireland and me in 2010.

CHAPTER 9: SEEING GROUPS, COMPANIES, AND COMMUNITIES THROUGH THEIR WORDS

228 Several studies have tracked language use and its relationship with successful marriages. Not surprisingly, use of pronouns, especially we-words, between the couples is a reliable predictor. See the work of Seider and colleagues (2009) and of Rachel Simmons, Peter Gordon, and Diane Chambless (2005).

229 The project linking pronoun use among couples and heart failure was conducted by Rohrbaugh and colleagues.

The Sexton and Helmreich project focused only on flight simulation studies. Later analyses by Brian Sexton found links between low we-word use and human error in the cockpit voice recordings of planes that had crashed (personal communication, April 20, 2010). See also the work of Foushee and Helmreich.

232 One of the more interesting approaches to studying natural interactions was pioneered by Bill Ickes, a social psychologist at the University of Texas at Arlington. In a typical study, pairs of students are instructed to visit Ickes’s research lab to participate in a conversation. After both complete questionnaires and a consent form to be videotaped, the experimenter tries to begin filming and then “discovers” that his camera is broken. The experimenter leaves the lab, claiming he’s going to find a technician. The students remain in the lab and usually begin talking with one another.

What they don’t know is that another hidden camera is taping their interaction. Later, the students are told about the hidden camera and are asked to rate their interaction on a minute-by-minute basis. Ickes is able to see how the two people were thinking about each other as their conversation unfolded. Bill has kindly allowed us to analyze some of his interactions. I strongly recommend his recent book, Strangers in a Strange Lab.

And while we are talking about real-world approaches to studying the behavior of people, I insist that you check out the work of Sandy Pentland and Roz Piccard, who are at MIT’s Media Laboratory. Together and separately, the two have devised a striking number of methods that track how people see and emotionally react to their worlds as they go about daily life.

232–235 One way to think about the increase in we-words over time is that the longer people talk with others, the more their identities become fused. Bill Swann and his colleagues have been conducting a number of imaginative projects tracking identity fusion. For example, making people more aware of their own group increases the likelihood that they will endorse fighting and dying for it.

233 The national defense project was run by Andrew Scholand, Yla Tausczik, and me and funded by Sandia National Laboratory. The research tracking twenty professional therapists