Analytic thinking as revealed by function words: What does language really measure?

Abstract

Understanding how people think is a key interest in psychology, and recent advances in automated text analysis have used a verbal analytic thinking index to approximate Kahneman's System 2 (e.g., deliberate, rational thinking). That is, prior work used a style word index to assess university student admissions essays and observed that those who used more articles and prepositions relative to storytelling words (e.g., pronouns) had higher grades at the end of college. This work presumed that verbal analytic thinking represented one's cognitive ability or intellectual potential, but this presumption has remained untested. The current research evaluated if verbal analytic thinking is indeed a reflection of cognitive ability or one's interest and motivation to engage in thinking, called need for cognition. Across 500 participants and two writing samples, the most reliable link to verbal analytic thinking was need for cognition, addressing an untested empirical question in psychology of language research.

Language Style Matching Without Interaction: Consuming Entertainment Media from Someone Unlike You is Engaging

“…Finally, an assumption of the current work is that one's language style is trait-like, meaning that people have an inherent style that should be reflected in their communication patterns. As other work suggests, style words are also impacted by what people write about (Markowitz, 2023), which is why soliciting more than one writing sample per participant was critical. Future work should test dispositional (trait-like), situational (state-like), and interactionist models of LSM for an accurate idea of how people use style words across contexts.…”

Linguistic Markers of Inherently False AI Communication and Intentionally False Human Communication: Evidence From Hotel Reviews

“…The linguistic style of AI-generated and human-generated texts will be measured using an analytic writing index comprised of function words (e.g., articles, prepositions, pronouns) (Jordan et al, 2019; Pennebaker et al, 2014). Analytic writing is a proxy for complex and elaborate thinking (Markowitz, 2023a; Seraj et al, 2021), describing how one thinks and reasons compared to what they think or reason about. Analytic writing has been applied to human-generated texts to evaluate a range of social and psychological dynamics such as persuasion (Markowitz, 2020a), trends in political speech (Jordan et al, 2019), need for cognition (Markowitz, 2023a), and individual differences like gender (Meier et al, 2020).…”

“…Analytic writing is a proxy for complex and elaborate thinking (Markowitz, 2023a; Seraj et al, 2021), describing how one thinks and reasons compared to what they think or reason about. Analytic writing has been applied to human-generated texts to evaluate a range of social and psychological dynamics such as persuasion (Markowitz, 2020a), trends in political speech (Jordan et al, 2019), need for cognition (Markowitz, 2023a), and individual differences like gender (Meier et al, 2020). In sum, this measure considers if AI-generated text is written with a similar linguistic style on the function word level compared to human-generated text.…”

“All the Makings of an Eventual NFL Starter:” Racial/Ethnic Disparities in a Decade of NFL Draft Profiles as Revealed by Natural Language Processing

“…Style words, on the other hand, are markers of how one is communicating about content (Ireland & Pennebaker, 2010). Words such as articles (e.g., the, a), prepositions (e.g., above, below), and pronouns (e.g., I, they) are common style words that link to a range of dynamics such as intelligence and intellectual potential (Markowitz, 2023a;Pennebaker et al, 2014), interpersonal interest and intergroup cohesion (Gonzales et al, 2010;Ireland et al, 2011), and depression (Rude et al, 2004), among many others (for reviews, see Boyd & Schwartz, 2021;Pennebaker, 2011;Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2010). Altogether, consistent with traditions in psychology of language research, content and style words are attention markers as they indicate what people focus on or what they do not focus on (Boyd & Pennebaker, 2015;Boyd & Schwartz, 2021;Pennebaker, 2011;Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2010).…”

“…A final exploratory linguistic dimension relates to communication style. Pennebaker and colleagues (2014) developed an index of seven style word categories called the analytic thinking index, which proxies formal, rational, and deliberate thinking (Kahneman, 2011;Markowitz, 2023a;Seraj et al, 2021). This index can be "applied to any type of text" (Pennebaker et al, 2014, p. 6), and has revealed bias-based disparities in prior work as well.…”