James W. Pennebaker > Quotes

“Human relationships are not rocket science--the are far, far more complicated”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“Conversations are like dances. Two people effortlessly move in step with one another, usually anticipating the other person's next move. If one of the dancers moves in an unexpected direction, the other typically adapts and builds on the new approach. As with dancing, it is often difficult to tell who is leading and who is following in that the two people are constantly affecting each other. And once the dance begins, it is almost impossible for one person to singly dictate the couple's movement.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“...after I published a paper showing that suicidal poets used pronouns differently from non-suicidal poets, a slightly inebriated poet threatened me with a butter knife at a party in my own home.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“The emotional findings, then, suggest that to gain the most benefit from writing about life’s traumas, acknowledge the negative but celebrate the positive.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“People who reported having a terrible traumatic experience and who kept the experience a secret had far more health problems than people who openly talked about their traumas. Why would keeping a secret be so toxic? More importantly, if you asked people to disclose emotionally powerful secrets, would their health improve? The answer, my students and I soon discovered, was yes.
We began running experiments where people were asked to write about traumatic experiences for fifteen to twenty minutes a day for three to four consecutive days. Compared to people who were told to write about nonemotional topics, those who wrote about trauma evidenced improved physical health. Later studies found that emotional writing boosted immune function, brought about drops in blood pressure, and reduced feelings of depression and elevated daily moods. Now, over twenty-five years after the first writing experiment, more than two hundred similar writing studies have been conducted all over the world. While the effects are often modest, the mere act of translating emotional upheavals into words is consistently associated with improvements in physical and mental health.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“One of the most interesting results was part of a study my students and I conducted dealing with status in email correspondence. Basically, we discovered that in any interaction, the person with the higher status uses I-words less (yes, less) than people who are low in status.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“If haunted by an emotional upheaval in your life, try writing about it or sharing the experience with others. However, if you catch yourself telling exactly the same story over and over in order to get past your distress, rethink your strategy. Try writing or talking about your trauma in a completely different way. How”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“The reason we is such a fun word is that half of the time it is used as a way to bring the speaker closer to others and the other half of the time to deflect responsibility away from the speaker. And”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“Function words behave differently than you might think. For example, the most commonly used word in spoken English, I, is used at far higher rates by followers than by leaders, truth-tellers than liars. People who use high rates of articles—a, an, the—do better in college than low users. And if you want to find your true love, compare the ways you use function words with that of your prospective partners.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“Who, for example, would have ever predicted that the high school student who uses too many verbs in her college admissions essay is likely to make lower grades in college? Or that the poet who overuses the word I in his poetry is at higher risk of suicide? Or that a certain world leader’s use of pronouns could reliably presage whether he’d lead his country into war? By looking more carefully at the ways people convey their thoughts in language we can begin to get a sense of their personalities, emotions, and connections with others.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“Younger people could dredge up an impressive number of dark words to express their pain. As writers got older and older, their negative emotion vocabulary diminished and their positive emotion word count skyrocketed. As”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“Human relationships are not rocket science—they are far, far more complicated. We can get our top scientists together and send people to the moon. Two speakers—male or female—can troubleshoot a carburetor in under an hour. But even the most creative and diligent scientists, much less two interested speakers, are unable to understand, explain, or agree on why actress Jennifer Lopez is attracted to the men she is or how long she will remain married to her current husband.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“early 1990s, Deborah Tannen, a linguist at Georgetown University, attracted international notice with her book You Just Don’t Understand. Her book, which was on the New York Times bestseller list for over four years, argued that men and women often talk past each other without appreciating that the other sex is almost another culture. Women, for example, are highly attentive to the thoughts and feelings of others; men are less so. Women view men’s speaking styles as blunt and uncaring; men view women’s as indirect and obscure.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“I’ve since learned that when someone changes the conversational direction, it serves as a powerful marker of what is on his or her mind.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“A guy might find a woman attractive but she might find him repulsive. The two must tango together. And LSM is capturing the dance—whereas the questionnaire is just assessing the dancers separately.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“Human relationships are not rocket science—they are far, far more complicated.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“Over the years, I’ve noticed that most of my colleagues and friends have their own favorite but relatively obscure words that even they aren’t familiar with. The”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“Remember to write continuously the entire twenty minutes. And never forget that this writing is for you and you alone. At the conclusion of your twenty minutes of writing, read the section “Post-writing thoughts” and complete the post-writing questionnaire. Post-Writing Thoughts Following the Day One Writing Session Congratulations! You have completed the first day of writing. After each writing exercise, it can be helpful to make objective assessments about how the writing felt. In this way, you can go back and determine which writing methods are most effective for you. For this and for all future writing exercises, respond to each of the five following questions either at the end of your writing or in a separate place. Put a number between 0 and 10 by each question. 0 — Not at all 1 2 3 4 5— Somewhat 6 7 8 9 10— A great deal ____ A. To what degree did you express your deepest thoughts and feelings? ____ B. To what degree do you currently feel sad or upset? ____ C. To what degree do you currently feel happy? ____ D. To what degree was today’s writing valuable and meaningful for you? E. Briefly describe how your writing went today so you may refer to this later. For many people, the first day of writing is the most difficult. This kind of writing can bring up emotions and thoughts that you may not have known that you had. It may also have flowed much more easily than you expected — especially if you wrote about something that you have been keeping to yourself for a long time. If you don’t want anyone to see your writing, keep the pages in a secure place or destroy them. If keeping them is not a problem, you can go back and analyze the pages at the end of the four days of writing. Now, take some time for yourself. Until tomorrow.”
― James W. Pennebaker, Expressive Writing: Words That Heal

“Writing down a past trauma, stressful or emotional experience can improve both your physical and emotional health.”
― James Pennebaker

“That our feelings affect the ways we think about the world is the take-home message of this chapter. Our emotions influence our thinking, which is reflected in the ways we use function words.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“We need to take out the trash.” As it happens, I have no intention of actually analyzing that data. Nor am I proposing to my son that we take a family outing to the trash bin. In many situations, people use the word we when they mean you. It serves as a polite form to order others around.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“Remember that this is the first of four days of writing. In today’s writing, your goal is to write about your deepest thoughts and feelings about the trauma or emotional upheaval that has been influencing your life the most. In your writing, really let go and explore this event and how it has affected you. Today, it may be beneficial to simply write about the event itself, how you felt when it was occurring, and how you feel now. As you write about this upheaval, you might begin to tie it to other parts of your life. For example, how is it related to your childhood and your relationships with your parents and close family? How is the event connected to those people you have most loved, feared, or been angry with? How is this upheaval related to your current life — your friends and family, your work, and your place in life? And above all, how is this event related to who you have been in the past, who you would like to be in the future, and who you are now? In today’s writing, it is particularly important that you really let go and examine your deepest emotions and thoughts surrounding this upheaval in your life.”
― James W. Pennebaker, Expressive Writing: Words That Heal

“Males categorize their worlds by counting, naming, and organizing the objects they confront. Women, in addition to personalizing their topics, talk in a more dynamic way, focusing on how their topics change. Discussions of change require more verbs.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“People who benefit from writing express more optimism, acknowledge negative events, are constructing a meaningful story of their experience, and have the ability to change perspectives as they write.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

“Who could possibly miss these questions? As it turns out, most people do. This includes the leading scholars in many top departments of psychology and linguistics around the world. Your high school English teachers would have done no better. How about you? The answers are: 1. a; 2. c; 3. b; 4. c; 5. a; 6. a. Women use first-person singular, cognitive, and social words more; men use articles more; and there are no meaningful differences between men and women for first-person plural or positive emotion words. If you are like most people, you probably got the social words question right and missed most of the others.”
― James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us