Love Stories: How Language Use Patterns Vary by Relationship Quality

Two's Company, Three's a Crowd? Maternal and Paternal Talk About Their Infant Differs in Associations With Wellbeing, Couple Relationship Quality, and Caregiving Sensitivity

“…Two factors indicate that the lack of association between wellbeing and self-focus is unlikely to reflect a floor effect. First, on average, first-person singular pronoun “I” accounted for 5.11% of total talk ( SD = 1.90%), echoing results from other studies [e.g., ( 33 ), M = 5.22, SD = 2.29%]. Second, this average rate was—for both mothers and fathers—approximately six times higher than for either partner-inclusive or infant-inclusive exemplars of the pronoun “we.” However, these latter measures did show greater variability and so may have been more sensitive to wellbeing-related contrasts in pronoun use.…”

“…Two recent expressive writing studies also indicate that pronoun use reflects (and perhaps even contributes to) relationship quality. Robinson et al ( 33 ) gave an expressive writing task to 88 undergraduate students whose partners were later invited to rate couple closeness; this multi-method multi-informant approach showed a small but positive association between use of the first-person plural “we” and partners' ratings of closeness. Unfortunately, a gender imbalance in the study sample (64% women) precluded any comparison of responses from men and women.…”

“…Specifically, this study showed that negative association between self-reported depressive symptoms and researchers' observational ratings of mothers' warmth toward their infant was mediated by variation in mothers' self-focus. In both the study by Humphreys et al ( 3 ), and related studies ( 33 , 34 ), self-focused was evaluated by coding the relative frequency of “I” and “we” terms from speech samples using the software package “Linguistic Investigation of Word Counts” [LIWC; ( 43 )]. At first glance, automation offers a potentially valuable solution to the time-demands associated with observational research.…”

“…For example, it is quite common for English-speaking parents to use the second person pronoun “You” to refer to themselves (e.g., “ You come home and you're dog-tired, but you know you need to make an effort for your baby ”). Likewise, in two-parent households the plural first-person pronoun “We” might be used to refer to parent and infant—as assumed by Humphreys et al ( 3 ), but might equally be used to refer to parent and partner; as in the studies by Allgood et al ( 34 ) and by Robinson et al ( 33 ). This point has particular force for first-time parents, as the transition to parenthood necessarily leads to a re-negotiation of relationships as “two” become “three.” Unfortunately, LIWC is not sufficiently sophisticated to distinguish between parents' use of partner-inclusive vs. infant-inclusive first-person plural pronouns (“we” can also be used to refer to the whole family unit, but this usage is, in our experience, much less common).…”

The Relationship Between Pronoun Use in Couple Interactions, Attachment, and Relationship Satisfaction

“…Individuals who use more I pronouns may engage in more positive couple interactions, more problem-solving behaviors (Simmons et al, 2005), and more constructive communications during the conflict (Cortopassi et al, 2018;Rentscher et al, 2013). Kubany et al (1995) demonstrated I pronouns increased partner sympathy and were linked to increased partner perceived closeness (Robinson et al, 2020). The use of I pronouns is indicative of a desire for a long-term relationship (van der Zanden et al, 2019).…”