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This is the woman’s house. She is happily married. Right now this guy is telling her a story or a dirty joke because the woman is obviously surprised by what he is saying. She is drinking home made iced tea. These two people are not married to each other but both of them are married.

—22-year-old female, recently engaged to be married

The lady just came from inside the house after pouring herself some beer from a freshly tapped keg. She has already had a lot to drink making her actions seem artificial. The man looks like he is more interested in grabbing the beer from her hand rather then meeting her. The man wants to grab the beer from her hand and take off.

—19-year-old male who reported drinking alcohol excessively

There are two people talking in the backyard of a house where a barbecue party is being held. She is wearing a long sleeve, denim, button-up shirt (probably from the Gap), tucked in, with the sleeves rolled up twice onto her forearm. She has medium brown hair that is tastefully cut (with layers) to just under her chin. She also has on a black (Gucci?) belt and a red bracelet on her right wrist.

—25-year-old female who spends over $500 per month on her wardrobe

The two people in this picture are engaged in a deep discussion about politics. The woman is expressing her surprise that the man is a Republican. She is shocked at the logic of his argument … The man is demonstrating (with his hands) that he appreciates the ideal of “smaller government” that he feels is best attributed to the Republican party.

—21-year-old female who is active in politics

The Meaning Extraction Method pulled out a number of consistent themes from people’s writing. Common ones included the social connection between the two people (are they dating, married; what has he just said), an analysis of their clothes (from simple descriptions to fashion observations), accessories (their watches, his glasses, her lipstick), what the woman is drinking (alcohol, tea, is she drunk?), the yard (flowers, trees, the trampoline), the house (window, siding, roof), and more about the two of them (her facial expression, their races and ages). As with the bottle experiment, each of these themes was actually a clump of related words.

As you can see, the themes people wrote about were indeed related to their own lives. People in dating relationships, especially women, wrote about the couple’s likely relationship and often commented on the wedding rings they apparently are wearing. Participants who reported spending a great deal of money on their own clothes and clothing accessories were much more likely to write about the couple’s clothes and accessories. Gardeners commented on the flowers and trees. And the more people admitted to drinking alcohol excessively, the more likely they were to infer the woman was drinking beer and was a bit tipsy.

That word use can predict buying behavior is not news to Google and other search engine companies. If you use a product like Gmail and receive an e-mail from a friend about his having Raisin Bran for breakfast, you might notice that a number of discreet ads appear on your e-mail page about fruit snacks, Mango Fruit Chillers, or a drug to reduce cholesterol. Today I received an e-mail from a family member whose forty-year-old friend has been irrational and moody and was asking my advice on what to do. The ads that popped up included “Treat Teen Acne,” “The Best Book for Teens,” and “Have a New Baby?” Apparently, some of the words—perhaps words like irrational and moody—are statistically associated with teenagers and having a new baby.

PROJECTIVE TESTS

Using pictures of the bottle and the garden party is a variation on a much older idea in psychology. Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and especially Freud’s daughter Anna Freud claimed that people naturally project their own thoughts and feelings onto other people and objects. Someone who may be angry at themselves for missing an appointment may run across an old friend and comment, “What’s going on? You seem