Predicting personality traits and psychopathology from linguistic style

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2014-07-10

Department

Towson University. Department of Psychology

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Rights

Copyright protected, all rights reserved.
There are no restrictions on access to this document. An internet release form signed by the author to display this document online is on file with Towson University Special Collections and Archives.

Subjects

Abstract

This study assessed the extent to which characteristics of written language predicted various personality traits and measures of psychopathology. Linguistic text analysis of written essays were used to predict self-assessment scores derived from the HEXACO six-dimensional personality scale and the SCL-90 psychopathology scale. The results indicated that each of the six HEXACO dimensions could be predicted significantly from the text analysis variables. Likewise, each of three psychopathology variables was predicted significantly by the same set of variables. These data suggest that it is possible to accurately assess personality and psychopathology from written communication.