You Are What You Blog

I’m quite familiar with “you are what you eat.”  Now we have “you are what you blog.”  That’s spooky.

Research completed at the University of Colorado by Tal Yarkoni
reveals a number of intriguing conclusions.  Contrary to popular
wisdom, the study finds that we bloggers do not present ourselves in an
overly idealistic way online–no differently online than
offline.  Rather, our online selves reflect the way we see ourselves and
how we are viewed by others offline.  

On numerous occasions I’ve had clients tell me they were different
people at home than at work.  I regularly pooh-poohed that notion.  A
number of times the spouse came in for the feedback conversation, and
inevitably confirmed my conclusion.  We’re the same person at home as at
work. 

One thing is certain: Our words convey meaning, but our choice of words also conveys details about our personality.   

Several previous studies have identified a connection between
language usage and personality.  But that research relied on limited
writing or speech samples and focused on general personality traits.  In
contrast, Yarkoni studied almost 700 bloggers who wrote a total of more
than 115,000 words.  Significantly, bloggers provide a large sample
because they write a lot, often over very long periods of time.  And so
in contrast to the previous research, the blogging samples not only made
identification of really large effects of personality upon language,
but also the more subtle and nuanced relationships between personality
and a person’s rhetoric. 

The study also found a number of unexpected correlations.  For
example, agreeable people often used sexual words that reflected
affection or sex, such as love, loving, hugs, etc., but not terms like gay or porn.  He found that sports-related words from the school category like football, basketball or team correlated with excitement-seeking.  In contrast, words relating to the studious aspects of school like books, desk,
etc., were not chosen by thrill seekers.  No consideration was given to
the underlying meaning of the text–a significant limitation. 

Yarkoni’s conclusion is enlightening: If
you’re sociable and like to seek out people offline, you’re probably
going to do the same thing online.  If you complain a lot when you’re
around your offline friends, you may very well complain about similar
things in your online blog.  Our personalities don’t dramatically change
just because we’ve turned on our computers.

So in the future, add these
insights to your blog reading, and recognize that there’s a lot more
going on in a blog than what a writer is blogging about.  Those of us in
the field of rhetorical analysis have known this for at least 100
years.  Perhaps, the psychologists are beginning to catch up.  You can
be sure about two things: when you read those happy blogs, you’ve got a
happy person writing them, and when you read those whiny, complaining
blogs, you also know what that person is like.  So choose poison or . . .
 well, life.

Link to original post

Leave a Reply