This is the second post in a series introducing some of the members of the Signal Patterns Scientific Advisory Board. These leading psychologists and researchers work with Signal Patterns to bring their work to the public in the form of various online applications.

James W. Pennebaker is Professor and Department Chair in the Psychology Department at the University of Texas at Austin. His research explores the links among emotion, language and health.  James finds that physician use, biological markers of stress and disease, and maladaptive behaviors can be reduced by simple writing and/or talking exercises.
More recently, he and his students have been examining how people’s natural use of words can more broadly reflect who they are.  The words people use in daily conversation can be powerful predictors of people’s health, personality, social situations, and the ways they relate to others.  Author or editor of 9 books and over 200 articles, James has received numerous research and teaching honors, including an honorary doctorate degree, the Pavlov award, and continuous funding from NSF, NIH, and other federal agencies for over 25 years.

Jamie, what’s your research focus?

Words.  I’m interested in how putting experiences into words can affect the ways we think about those experiences and also transform our physical and mental health.  At the same time, I’m fascinated how the words we use in everyday language can reflect our personality, behavior, health, and relationships with others.

What are the applications for your work?

There are two very broad applications to this research:

First, my students and I have been developing in-person and online methods whereby people in distress are asked to write about emotional upheavals.  We find, for example, that married soldiers returning from war evidence higher marital satisfaction and fewer instances of family violence if they are asked to write about their relationship than soldiers asked to write about non-emotional topics.  Several labs around the world are now adapting this writing research to study wound healing after surgery, college adjustment among new students, or even ways of coping with job losses.

The second application has been to devise automated ways to track the psychological states of people through their use of words.  Using computer programs such as our own Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program, we have been able to make evaluations of world leaders through their speeches and interviews.  We can also make informed decisions about people’s personalities, motives, purchasing patterns, etc. by looking at the words they use.  You can get a sense of some of these applications from our website.

What are you reading?

I’m a random reader influenced by my wife (who is a writer), my own research and books that catch my eye in airports.  In the last month, I’ve read:

• Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss,
• Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and
• American English Grammar written by Charles Carpenter Fries in 1940.

I’m also addicted to geezersisters.com.

What are good books for the lay person to understand your area?

For the writing work, I would recommend my book Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotion.

For the language work, there really isn’t a book that captures what our research team is doing right now.  A good start would be to go to my website.

How is the internet/online applications impacting your work?

The internet is at the heart of everything we do now.  As with other labs, we are able to analyze tremendous data sets very quickly and begin to link language use to a wide array of behaviors.  What makes all this so exciting is that the research community is now on the threshold of rethinking how we do research.

For the last century, social scientists have been forced to ask people about their worlds using forced-choice questionnaires.  The technology is quickly evolving in a way that we can now actually ask people to tell us what they are thinking or feeling directly.  With new text analysis methods, we can convert their open-ended answers into meaningful responses that can be analyzed in dozens of ways.

What do you always get asked?  What do your students want to know?

My own Frequently Asked Questions are:

• Why does writing about a topic help to change the topic in our mind?
• Why do you study function words (e.g., pronouns, prepositions) instead of content words (e.g., nouns, regular verbs)?
• When will you be in your office?
• Will it be on the test?

How would you like to bring your work to the public?

I feel that I’m doing it through journal articles, books, internet and the mass media.  My fear is that some of this work will get out too soon before we know what we are doing or really finding.

What’s the biggest misperception of your field?

Misperception of my field?  I’m not sure what my field is.  Maybe the misperception is that I have a field or am in a field.

What’s the ‘holy grail’ for your work?

For me, the holy grail is that I have fun discovering new patterns and relationships.

What’s wrong with psychology?

Actually, nothing is wrong with psychology.  Sure, most theories, methods and assumptions don’t pan out.  Even the most established findings or schools of thought have limited shelf lives.  In a sense, this is what makes the field so vibrant and fun.