Handbook of Language Analysis in Psychology
Edited by Morteza Dehghani and Ryan L. Boyd
Request a free digital professor copy on VitalSource ?“Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals.”
—Choice Reviews
“Language provides a richer, more detailed window into the human experience than any other source of data, and large-scale computational techniques have created unprecedented opportunities in the study of human psychology. This volume provides a comprehensive examination of language analysis methods and how they are being used across an astonishing range of psychological research. It will be highly valuable to students and scholars in psychology who are seeking a relevant, up-to-date overview of text analysis methods. Conversely, this book also represents an invitation to computational folks to better understand the nature of psychological research questions and the ways that their text analysis expertise can help advance understanding of what makes people tick.”
—Philip Resnik, PhD, Department of Linguistics and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Maryland, College Park
“The accelerating growth of new computational methods, theories, and applications in language analysis opens up exciting possibilities for researchers, but it can also be daunting if you are entering the field or trying to keep up to speed. But never fear! Dehghani and Boyd have brought together a formidable crew of experts to create an accessible guide to the latest developments in language analysis. This book is an ideal text for a graduate course, and can serve as a reference and source of inspiration for researchers.”
—Sanjay Srivastava, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Oregon
“This handbook assembles many of the best researchers who quantitatively analyze language to better understand people. The coverage is impressively broad, from personality to politics, from conversations and deception to the language of affect and morality. The methods used are equally broad, from the use of classical lexica to modern vector embedding methods. This book is ideal for a graduate seminar in psychology or related fields on the ways in which language analysis is yielding insights into human thought, behavior, and communication.”
—Lyle Ungar, PhD, Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania
Table of Contents
I. Introduction and Methods1. Text Analysis for Psychology: Methods, Principles, and Practices, Brendan Kennedy, Ashwini Ashokkumar, Ryan L. Boyd, & Morteza Dehghani
II. Dyadic Synchrony/Psychological Coordination in Conversations
2. Language Coordination in Writing and Conversation, Molly E. Ireland & Taleen Nalabandian
3. Language in Close Relationships, Andrea B. Horn & Tabea Meier
4. Harnessing a Language Analysis Perspective to Uncover Emergent Group Processes, Aimée A. Kane & Lyn M. van Swol
5. Cooperation, Interaction, Search: Computational Approaches to the Psychology of Asking and Answering Questions, Christina M. Boyce-Jacino & Simon DeDeo
III. Political Psychology
6. Language Analysis in Political Psychology, Kayla N. Jordan 
7. Automated Integrative Complexity: Language Analysis Tools for Psychological Research, Shannon C. Houck, Lucian Gideon Conway, III, & Alivia Zubrod
8. Text as Data in Political Psychology, Martijn Schoonvelde, Christian Pipal, & Gijs Schumacher
IV. Morality
9. Language Analysis in Moral Psychology, Mohammad Atari & Morteza Dehghani
10. Morality in Politics, Sze Yuh Nina Wang & Yoel Inbar
11. Morality in Language, Cristina Leone & Laura Niemi
V. Deception/Lying
12. Motivation for Deception, Paul J. Taylor, Grace McKenzie, & Ben Marshall
13. Lies and Language: A Context-Contingent Approach to Verbal Cues of Deceit, David M. Markowitz & Jeffrey T. Hancock
14. Deception and Its Detection, Judee K. Burgoon, Norah E. Dunbar, & Lee A. Spitzley
VI. Personality and Individual Differences
15. Investigating Individual Differences in Metaphor Use and Its Outcomes: Research Questions, Measurement, and Findings, Adam K. Fetterman, Katherine French, & Brian P. Meier
16. The Quantum Self: Examining Methodologies to Understand How Language Impacts Bilinguals’ Dual Selves, Shu Jiang & Nairán Ramírez-Esparza
17. Personality Disorder and Verbal Behavior, Charlotte Entwistle, Ely Marceau, & Ryan L. Boyd
VII. Affect/Sentiment
18. Behavioral Machine Intelligence with Language, Nikolaos Malandrakis, Victor Martinez, Anil Ramakrishna, Manoj Kumar, Karan Singla, Md Nasir, & Shrikanth Narayanan
19. Theory-Driven Measurement of Emotion (Expressions) in Social Media Text, William J. Brady, Killian McLoughlin, & M. J. Crockett
20. Identifying and Understanding the Targets of Sentiment Analysis, Charles Welch, Mahmoud Azab, & Rada Mihalcea
VIII. Public Health and Well-Being
21. The Language of Environmentalism: Harnessing Social Media Data in the Face of Environmental Uncertainty, Sonya Sachdeva
22. The Language of Mindfulness: Studying Contemplative Experience through Natural Language, Angelina J. Polsinelli, Deanna M. Kaplan, & Matthias R. Mehl
IX. Judgment/Biases
23. Knowledge, Cognition, and Everyday Judgment: An Introduction to the Distributed Semantics Approach, Russell Richie & Sudeep Bhatia
24. Sociolinguistic Properties of Word Embeddings, Alina Arseniev-Koehler & Jacob G. Foster
25. Social Biases in Word Embeddings and Their Relation to Human Cognition, Aylin Caliskan & Molly Lewis
26. Word Embeddings Reveal Social Group Attitudes and Stereotypes in Large Language Corpora, Tessa E. S. Charlesworth & Mahzarin R. Banaji
X. Ethical Guidelines
27. Ethical Pitfalls for Natural Language Processing in Psychology, Mark Alfano, Emily Sullivan, & Amir Ebrahimi Fard
28. Ethical Issues in Text Mining for Mental Health, Joshua August Skorburg & Phoebe Friesen
XI. Looking to the Horizon
29. Intergrouping and Aging Matters Textually, Howard Giles & Joseph B. Walther
30. Text and Discourse with Humans and Computers, Arthur C. Graesser & Leah C. Windsor
31. Computer-Based Language Analysis as a Paradigm Shift, James W. Pennebaker
Author Index
Subject Index
About the Editors
Morteza Dehghani, PhD, is Associate Professor of Psychology and Computer Science and a member of the faculty of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. Dr. Dehghani's research relies on machine learning and natural language processing to explore cognitive and psychological traces in artifacts of social discourse. Specifically, he investigates properties of moral cognition by analyzing language in conjunction with behavioral studies. Dr. Dehghani is a recipient of a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation and a Young Investigator Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.Ryan L. Boyd, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Behavioral Analytics at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, holding shared appointments in the Department of Psychology, Security Lancaster, and the Data Science Institute. His research interests broadly revolve around how our motives are revealed in language—that is, how our everyday words provide clues to why we think, feel, and behave in the ways that we do. Dr. Boyd’s research spans topics ranging from personality to society, mental health, human sexuality, and storytelling. He has authored dozens of free, open-source text analysis programs for social scientists, and he has been involved in the development of Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count since 2015. Dr. Boyd is on the editorial boards at PLOS ONE and Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence: Language and Computation, and is a member of the advisory board for Psychology of Language and Communication.
Contributors
Mark Alfano, PhD, Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney, AustraliaAlina Arseniev-Koehler, MA, Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
Ashwini Ashokkumar, PhD, Polarization and Social Change Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Mohammad Atari, PhD, Department of Psychology, The University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Mahmoud Azab, BS, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Mahzarin R. Banaji, PhD, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Sudeep Bhatia, PhD, Department of Psychology and Department of Marketing, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Christina M. Boyce-Jacino, MSc, Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Ryan L. Boyd, PhD, Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
William J. Brady, PhD, Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Judee K. Burgoon, EdD, Eller College of Management, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
Aylin Caliskan, PhD, Information School, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Tessa E. S. Charlesworth, PhD, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Lucian Gideon Conway, III, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Montana, Missoula, MT
M. J. Crockett, PhD, Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Simon DeDeo, PhD, Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Morteza Dehghani, PhD, Department of Psychology, The University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Norah E. Dunbar, PhD, Department of Communication, University of California,Santa Barbara, CA
Charlotte Entwistle, MRes, Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Amir Ebrahimi Fard, PhD, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands
Adam K. Fetterman, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Houston, Houston, TX
Jacob G. Foster, PhD, Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles,CA
Katherine French, MA, Department of Psychology, The University of Texas, El Paso, TX
Phoebe Friesen, PhD, Department of Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Howard Giles, PhD, DSc, Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara, California;School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Arthur C. Graesser, PhD, Institute for Intelligent Systems and Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN
Jeffrey T. Hancock, PhD, Department of Communication, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Andrea B. Horn, PhD, University Research Priority Program (URPP) Dynamics of Healthy Aging, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Shannon C. Houck, PhD, Defense Analysis Department, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA
Yoel Inbar, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Molly E. Ireland, PhD, Department of Psychological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX
Shu Jiang, MS, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
Kayla N. Jordan, PhD, Department of Analytics, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, Harrisburg, PA
Aimée A. Kane, PhD, Palumbo-Donahue School of Business, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA
Deanna M. Kaplan, PhD, Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences; Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI
Brendan Kennedy, BS, Department of Computer Science, The University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Manoj Kumar, PhD, Applied Scientist, Amazon, Seattle, WA
Cristina Leone, BSc, Department of Psychology, University College London, London, UK
Molly Lewis, PhD, Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Nikolaos Malandrakis, PhD, Applied Scientist, Amazon, Seattle, WA
Ely Marceau, PhD, School of Psychology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia
David M. Markowitz, PhD, School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
Ben Marshall, PhD, Behavioral Science Consultant, London, UK
Victor R. Martinez, PhD, Machine Engineer, Apple, Cupertino, California
Grace McKenzie, MSc, Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Killian McLoughlin, MSc, Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Matthias R. Mehl, PhD, Department of Psychology, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
Brian P. Meier, PhD, Department of Psychology, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA
Tabea Meier, PhD, Life-Span Development Lab, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
Rada Mihalcea, PhD, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Taleen Nalabandian, MA, Department of Psychological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX
Shrikanth Narayanan, PhD, Viterbi School of Engineering, The University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Md Nasir, PhD, Data and Applied Scientist, Microsoft, Redmond, WA
Laura Niemi, PhD, Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
James W. Pennebaker, PhD, Department of Psychology, The University of Texas, Austin, TX
Christian Pipal, MA, Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Angelina J. Polsinelli, PhD, Department of Neurology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN
Anil K. Ramakrishna, PhD, Applied Scientist, Amazon, Seattle, WA
Nairán Ramírez-Esparza, PhD, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
Russell Richie, PhD, Department of Biomedical and Health Informatics, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
Sonya Sachdeva, PhD, U.S. Forest Service, Evanston, IL
Martijn Schoonvelde, PhD, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Gijs Schumacher, PhD, Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Karan Singla, PhD, Senior Inventive Scientist, Interactions LLC, Franklin, MA
Joshua August Skorburg, PhD, Centre for Advancing Responsible and Ethical Artificial Intelligence, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Lee A. Spitzley, PhD, School of Business, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY
Emily Sullivan, PhD, Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven Technical University, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Paul J. Taylor, PhD, Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK; Department of Psychology Conflict, Risk, and Safety, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
Lyn M. van Swol, PhD, Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
Joseph B. Walther, PhD, Department of Communication and Center for Information Technology and Society, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA
Sze Yuh Nina Wang, MA, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Charles Welch, PhD, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany
Leah C. Windsor, PhD, Institute for Intelligent Systems and Department of English, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN
Alivia Zubrod, MA, Department of Psychology, University of Montana, Missoula, MN