Revealing dimensions of thinking in open-ended self-descriptions: An automated meaning extraction method for natural language

Abstract

A new method for extracting common themes from written text is introduced and applied to 1,165 open-ended self-descriptive narratives. Drawing on a lexical approach to personality, the most commonly-used adjectives within narratives written by college students were identified using computerized text analytic tools. A factor analysis on the use of these adjectives in the selfdescriptions produced a 7-factor solution consisting of psychologically meaningful dimensions. Some dimensions were unipolar (e.g., Negativity factor, wherein most loaded items were negatively valenced adjectives); others were dimensional in that semantically opposite words clustered together (e.g., Sociability factor, wherein terms such as shy, outgoing, reserved, and loud all loaded in the same direction). The factors exhibited modest reliability across different types of writ writing samples and were correlated with self-reports and behaviors consistent with the dimensions. Similar analyses with additional content words (adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs) yielded additional psychological dimensions associated with physical appearance, school, relationships, etc. in which people contextualize their self-concepts. The results suggest that the meaning extraction method is a promising strategy that determines the dimensions along which people think about themselves. Keywords LIWC; Meaning Extraction Method; natural language; self-descriptionsIn a job or clinical interview, meeting an office mate for the first time, or talking to someone at a party, we usually ask others to tell us about themselves. Directly or indirectly, we elicit people's descriptions of themselves to construct a coherent sense of them. With the exception of a small group of social and personality psychologists, most people consider free descriptions as the currency of everyday life. From the media describing politicians and celebrities, reference letters, or through casual observation and gossip, much of what we think and know about others is shaped by everyday descriptions of them.Although free descriptions are the natural form of appraising what people are like, most formal personality assessment methods use itemized questionnaires. With statistical methods, questionnaires make it easy to summarize people's personality trait levels, to make comparisons across respondents, and to generalize across groups. With a common vocabulary of personality factors, it is easy for researchers to communicate with one another about the major dimensions of personality that are associated with a variety of behaviors. A recurring

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