The Secret Life of Pronouns_ What Our Words Say About Us - James W. Pennebaker [73]
Every project, of course, is unique. However, as the studies have mounted, we can stand back and take the Squint Test. The Squint Test is a nonscientific way of trying to assess if there are reliable patterns to deception across the various studies. As you can see in the chart on page 162, there are five general word categories. Each word is associated with a bar on the right. The closer the bar is to the right of the page, the more that word category is associated with honesty and telling the truth. Bars on the far left indicate words that typically occur with people who are lying or being deceptive. Words linked to bars in the middle tend to be either unrelated to deception or are too unreliable to classify.
SELF-REFERENCES: THE I-WORDS
In virtually every chapter of this book, first-person singular pronouns are important. In deception research, the word I (including I’m, I’ll, I’d, I’ve, and related contractions) is the best single marker of a person’s being honest.
The use of I-words has tremendous social and psychological significance. By definition, it is an identity statement. Using I in conversation is announcing to your speaking companion that you are aware of yourself, that you are paying attention to yourself. There is a certain degree of vulnerability in doing this—especially if there is a chance that your companion is judging you or seeking to harm you in some way. I’ve often thought of the use of I as a subtle submissive gesture—much like the lower-status dog rolling over and baring his belly to the bigger, more dangerous dog. “Hey, I’m not a problem. I’m at your service. I’m not a threat.”
There have been several studies that suggest that when people are forced to pay attention to themselves, they become more humble and honest. Robert Wicklund, who is now at the University of Bergen in Norway, pioneered a theory of self-awareness in the 1970s. He and his colleagues devised dozens of imaginative studies where people would have to do some kind of task in one of two conditions—in front of a mirror or away from a mirror. If they completed a questionnaire in front of a mirror, they reported having lower self-esteem and generally less positive moods. More intriguing, their answers to questions tended to be more honest—their reports of their weight, grades, and behaviors tended to match objective measures of their true weight, grades, and behaviors. Also, completing questionnaires in front of a mirror caused people to use the word I more.
Why does self-attention make people more honest? Wicklund posited that paying attention to the self made people briefly ponder who they ideally wanted to be. Perhaps their lifelong dreams were to be strong, honest, beautiful, brave, and compassionate. Looking in the mirror made them realize that they had not attained these ideals. Ultimately, then, people would see the gulf between their ideal and real selves, which made them feel bad about themselves but, at the same time, motivated them to try to be better people. Self-awareness, in Wicklund’s view, drives us all to be the people we always wanted to be.
Indeed, most of us usually want to be honest with others and with ourselves. Self-attention provokes honesty. I-words simply reflect self-attention. Across the multiple studies, when we see the use of I-words increase, it is likely that self-attention is higher. And, with self-attention, people tend to be more honest.
COGNITIVE COMPLEXITY
The stories that people generate when telling the truth are generally more complex than false stories. Not only do people say more when telling the truth but each sentence they put together is longer and more complex. Their words are bigger, suggesting that their statements are more precise and nuanced. The statements of truth-tellers