Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns • Hacker News Board

Re: Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

#21

Post by mrb » Fri, Aug 19, 2011, 4:22 PM UTC

ColinWright wrote: post #11

I commented when this was submitted yesterday, the bit that struck me was this: ... we can predict people’s college performance reasonably well by simply analyzing their college admissions essays. Across four years, we analyzed the admissions essays of 25,000 students and then tracked their grade point averages (GPAs). Higher GPAs were associated with admission essays that used high rates of nouns and low rates of ve…

What if the same prediction could be made on motivation letters sent by candidates to potential employers? If I were Google, I would hire this guy. He would fit perfectly in their candidate selection effort of using automated tools to process resumes & motivation letters...

Re: Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

#22

Post by mvzink » Sat, Aug 20, 2011, 5:54 AM UTC

hugh3 wrote: post #4

lawlit wrote: post #3

Can they analyse the bible ? (or any holy book for that matter)

The Bible is written in three different languages (Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek) so running any sort of analysis would be difficult, and in any case I'm not sure what it'd tell us. Running an analysis on the translation into English would rather depend on what translation you were using. For instance the King James Bible is rather heavy on the now-obsolete "thee/thou" forms, whereas a modern translation isn't.

Perhaps analyzing translations themselves would be fruitful. Compare them to other translations, or to other works by the same authors (for the translator-authors), etc.

Re: Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

#23

Post by da_dude4242 » Sat, Aug 20, 2011, 10:13 PM UTC

>Much to my surprise, I soon discovered that the ways people used pronouns in their essays predicted whose health would improve the most. Specifically, those people who benefited the most from writing changed in their pronoun use from one essay to another. Pronouns were reflecting people’s abilities to change perspective.

Not surprising if you consider this idea has already been entertained. Freud's "Ego", "Super Ego", and "Id" are Latin translations for I, We, and It. Pronouns

Neo-Freudian techniques like Voice Dialogue are training in examining phenomena from all pronoun perspectives. A training tool for horizontal perspective fluidity.

Re: Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

#24

Post by wazoox » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 11:10 AM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #19

ajuc wrote: post #15

I wonder, if they checked some languages that includes pronouns in verbs. For example in Polish pronouns are mixed with verbs - you say "szła" (she went), "pójdzie" (he will go) or "idę" (i am going), you can add pronouns "ona szła", "on pójdzie", "ja idę", but that's only stylistic choice. Most people rarely use pronouns (it's considered verbose, and sometimes egocentric to add "ja" (I) when you don't have to). I su…

Ditto in Russian - I suspect this is true of most slavic languages, and if I had to guess, romantic ones. (Apparently, one of the hardest things for someone learning Russian from English is the almost total lack of the verb "be" - you can say "I am." in Russian, but it's almost a nonsense sentence.)

Pronouns are hardly used in Spanish (in Spain at least "me voy"). They are optional in Italian too ("sono contento").