Type of Talk: UTCS Colloquia/AI

Speaker/Affiliation: Jamie
Pennebaker/Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin

Talk Audience: UTCS Faculty, Graduate Students, Undergraduate Students

, and Outside Interested Parties

Date/Time: Friday, March 23 2012,

11:00 a.m.

Location: ACES 2.302

Host: Ray Mooney

Talk Title:
What our most forgettable words say about us

Talk Abstract:
Wait! D

on''t toss out those pronouns, prepositions, articles, and auxiliary ver

bs. These seemingly insignificant words say the more about people than any

other word categories you usually analyze. In this talk, a large number of
studies will be described that point to the links between function words a

nd social and psychological states, including personality, honesty, stat

us, gender, social relationships, and emotional state. Implications for

psychology, computational linguistics, business, and others parts of aca

demia will be addressed.

Speaker Bio:
James W. Pennebaker is the Reg

ents Centennial Professor of Liberal Arts and the Departmental Chair in the
Psychology Department at the University of Texas at Austin, where he rece

ived his Ph.D. in 1977. He has been on the faculty at the University of Vir

ginia, Southern Methodist University, and, since 1997, The University o

f Texas. He and his students are exploring the links between traumatic expe

riences, expressive writing, natural language use, and physical and ment

al health. His studies find that physical health and work performance can i

mprove by simple writing and/or talking exercises. His most recent research
focuses on the nature of language and emotion in the real world. The words
people use serve as powerful reflections of their personality and social w

orlds. Author or editor of 9 books and over 250 articles, Pennebaker has r

eceived numerous awards and honors.