Presidential candidates’ choice of words reveals aspects of their personalities

The words a speaker chooses communicate more than just ideas and opinions. Language reveals much about a speaker’s personality. In the recent U.S. presidential debate, two very different personalities were on display—that of Democratic candidate and Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. In an article published in The Conversation, Associate Professor of Quantitative Marketing and Analytics Vivek Astvansh and Undergraduate student Qianhui Liu used theories in psycholinguistics and computational linguistics to analyze the candidates’ choices of words and reveal some psychological indicators about them. Trump’s words showed a focus on himself. He used the word “I” more often. In contrast, Harris used “we” more frequently, signaling a focus on collective responsibility. This asymmetry indicates that Trump centered more on individual agency, Astvansh and Liu write, while Harris leaned towards a more group-oriented approach.