Matthias R Mehl
Biographic Data
| ID | 105622 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthias R Mehl |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthias R |
| FAMILY NAME | Mehl |
| SIGNATURE | MEHL M R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Arizona |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2698-5007 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 305 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Sliding Into Silence? We Are Speaking 300 Daily Words Fewer Every Year
Person-related selection bias in mobile sensing research: Robust findings from two panel studies
In psychology, mobile sensing is increasingly used to record behavior in real-life situations. However, little is known about the selectivity of samples participating in these new data collection approaches and thus about potential risks to the validity of research findings. We therefore investigated two potential sources of selection bias in smartphone-based data collections. Specifically, we examined whether smartphone system ownership (Android…
Feel flows: Language use patterns in the lyrics of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys
Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys is considered one of the most prolific artists of the 20th century. At the same time, he is also known for his persisting struggles with mental health. Considering that most of his 60+-year career consists of published songs and lyrics, he makes an interesting case study to understand the dynamics of language use in relation to psychological experiences over the course of an individual’s life and career. We identifi…
Impact of Presentation-Language and Self-Construal on Irony Interpretation in Spanish–English Bilinguals
This study investigated the role of self-construal and language background in irony interpretation. Prior research considered either cultural or language background, but not both. Spanish–English bilinguals ( N = 152) from the U.S. and Mexico rated stories containing ironic and literal statements in English and Spanish, then completed the Language History Questionnaire, Self-construal Scale, and Sarcasm-self-report scale (SSS). Results showed tha…
Are women really (not) more talkative than men? A registered report of binary gender similarities/differences in daily word use
Women are widely assumed to be more talkative than men. Challenging this assumption, Mehl et al. (2007) provided empirical evidence that men and women do not differ significantly in their daily word use, speaking about 16,000 words per day (WPD) each. However, concerns were raised that their sample was too small to yield generalizable estimates and too age and context homogeneous to permit inferences beyond college students. This registered repor…
Loneliness and time alone in everyday life: A descriptive-exploratory study of subjective and objective social isolation
Loneliness—the subjective experience of social isolation—is a common experience that can become an enduring feature of everyday life. How does feeling lonely relate to spending time alone? In this descriptive-exploratory study, we used the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), a naturalistic observation tool that samples sounds from participants’ daily lives, to assess time spent alone as an index of social isolation. We combined data from thr…
Personality, workstation type, task focus, and happiness in the workplace
The current study adds to the emerging interest in workplace person-environmental associations by exploring the interaction between employee personality traits and office workstation type (open bench seating, cubicle, private office) in predicting on-task focus and happiness. To capture an ecologically valid assessment of such interactions, 231 federal office workers completed momentary and global, one-time surveys. While global focus ratings wer…
Sleep efficiency and naturalistically-observed social behavior following marital separation: The critical role of contact with an ex-partner
Marital disruption is associated with increased risk for a range of poor health outcomes, including disturbed sleep. This report examines trajectories of actigraphy-assessed sleep efficiency following marital separation as well as the extent to which daily social behaviors and individual differences in attachment explain variability in these trajectories over time. One hundred twenty-two recently-separated adults ( N = 122) were followed longitud…
The Sounds of Memory: Extending the Age–Prospective Memory Paradox to Everyday Behavior and Conversations
Findings confirmed older adults' preserved PM performance in everyday life across different indicators with increasing ecological validity. Furthermore, as a novel method to assess conversational PM in everyday life, the EAR opens new insights about the awareness of PM lapses and the communication of intentions in real life
Emotional recovery following divorce: Will the real self-compassion please stand up
Self-compassion is a positive psychological construct associated with heightened well-being, but the construct is largely measured via self-report. In a study of divorcing adults ( N = 120), we sought to replicate and extend prior research on the association between self-rated and observed self-compassion, the linguistic cues associated with self-rated and observed self-compassion, and the predictive utility of observed self-compassion. Untrained…
(Not) Lost in Translation: Psychological Adaptation Occurs During Speech Translation
While language style is considered to be automatic and relatively stable, its plasticity has not yet been studied in translations that require the translator to “step into the shoes of another person.” In the present study, we propose a psychological model of language adaptation in translations. Focusing on an established interindividual difference marker of language style, that is, gender, we examined whether translators assimilate to the origin…
Is frequent sighing an indicator of dispositional negative emotionality? A multi-sample, multi-measure naturalistic-observation study
Investigating the Relationship between Resident Physician Implicit Bias and Language Use during a Clinical Encounter with Hispanic Patients
Prior research suggests that the implicit biases of physicians are negatively associated with quality of medical care and patient satisfaction among minority patients. However, relatively little is known about how physicians express these subtle forms of bias in patient interactions. This study examined the implicit and explicit anti-Hispanic biases of 53 resident physicians and the relationship between anti-Hispanic bias and language use during …
I blame you, I hear you: Couples' pronoun use in conflict and dyadic coping
In dyadic interaction, a verbal focus on one individual ("you-talk," "I-talk"), rather than on the couple ("we-talk") has predominantly been linked to dysfunctional relationship processes. However, context differences in these links have not yet been systematically examined. Is it functional to asymmetrically focus on one partner during support interactions but problematic during conflict? Does a high level of couple-focus represent a resource ac…
Natural, Everyday Language Use Provides a Window Into the Integrity of Older Adults’ Executive Functioning
This study provides first evidence that the words older adults use in daily life provide a window into their EF
“Liwc auf Deutsch”: The Development, Psychometrics, and Introduction of DE- Liwc2015
The German adaptation of the LIWC2015 dictionary
Estimating the Prevalence of Gender-Biased Language in Undergraduates’ Everyday Speech
Depression, negative emotionality, and self-referential language: A multi-lab, multi-measure, and multi-language-task research synthesis
Depressive symptomatology is manifested in greater first-person singular pronoun use (i.e., I-talk), but when and for whom this effect is most apparent, and the extent to which it is specific to depression or part of a broader association between negative emotionality and I-talk, remains unclear. Using pooled data from N = 4,754 participants from 6 labs across 2 countries, we examined, in a preregistered analysis, how the depression-I-talk effect…
Convergence of naïve coders and participant report ratings of attachment to a former partner: When we should be me
Using a Brunswik lens framework, this study examined whether lay observers could accurately detect participants' attachment to a former partner following romantic breakup or divorce. We predicted that the ratings of post-breakup attachment (completed after reading participants' transcribed stream-of-consciousness discussions of the recent separation) would be associated with participants' self-reported ratings of attachment to a former partner an…
Linguistic Markers of Grandiose Narcissism: A Liwc Analysis of 15 Samples
Narcissism is unrelated to using first-person singular pronouns. Whether narcissism is linked to other language use remains unclear. We aimed to identify linguistic markers of narcissism. We applied the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to texts ( k = 15; N = 4,941). The strongest positive correlates were using words related to sports, second-person pronouns, and swear words. The strongest negative correlates were using anxiety/fear words, tentat…
Preliminary evidence that androgen signaling is correlated with men's everyday language
OBJECTIVES: Testosterone (T) has an integral, albeit complex, relationship with social behavior, especially in the domains of aggression and competition. However, examining this relationship in humans is challenging given the often covert and subtle nature of human aggression and status-seeking. The present study aimed to investigate whether T levels and genetic polymorphisms in the AR gene are associated with social behavior assessed via natural…
Early Linguistic Markers of Trauma-Specific Processing Predict Post-trauma Adjustment
Background: Identifying early predictors for psychological disorders, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is crucial for effective treatment and prevention efforts. Obtaining such predictors is challenging and methodologically limited, for example by individuals' distress, arousal and reduced introspective ability. In this study, we investigated the predictive power of language-based behavioral markers of psychological processes. Method…
Impact of Narrative Expressive Writing on Heart Rate, Heart Rate Variability, and Blood Pressure After Marital Separation
OBJECTIVE: Divorce is a common stressor that is associated with increased risk for poor long-term physical and mental health. Using an experimental design, the current study examined the impact of expressive writing (EW) on average heart rate (HR), HR variability (HRV), and blood pressure (BP) 7.5 months later. METHODS: Participants from a community sample of recently separated adults (N = 109) were assigned to one of three conditions: traditiona…
The Hispanic health paradox: From epidemiological phenomenon to contribution opportunities for psychological science
Similar to non-Hispanic Blacks, Hispanics/Latinos experience a range of psychosocial and physical health challenges, including high rates of poverty, neighborhood segregation, discrimination, poor healthcare access, and high rates of obesity, diabetes, and undiagnosed and late-stage diagnosed diseases. Despite such risks, Hispanics generally experience better physical health and lower mortality than non-Hispanic Whites, an epidemiological phenome…
Cognitive Benefits of Online Social Networking for Healthy Older Adults
Learning and using an online social networking site may provide specific benefits for complex working memory in a group of healthy older adults. This may reflect the particular cognitive demands associated with online social networking and/or the benefits of social engagement more generally
Personality in its natural habitat: Manifestations and implicit folk theories of personality in daily life
To examine the expression of personality in its natural habitat, the authors tracked 96 participants over 2 days using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), which samples snippets of ambient sounds in participants' immediate environments. Participants' Big Five scores were correlated with EAR-derived information on their daily social interactions, locations, activities, moods, and language use; these quotidian manifestations were generally…
Knowing me, knowing you: The accuracy and unique predictive validity of self-ratings and other-ratings of daily behavior
Many people assume that they know themselves better than anyone else knows them. Recent research on inaccuracies in self-perception, however, suggests that self-knowledge may be more limited than people typically assume. In this article, the authors examine the possibility that people may know a person as well as (or better than) that person knows himself or herself. In Study 1, the authors document the strength of laypeople's beliefs that the se…
The sounds of social life: A psychometric analysis of students' daily social environments and natural conversations
The natural conversations and social environments of 52 undergraduates were tracked across two 2-day periods separated by 4 weeks using a computerized tape recorder (the Electronically Activated Recorder [EAR]). The EAR was programmed to record 30-s snippets of ambient sounds approximately every 12 min during participants' waking hours. Students' social environments and use of language in their natural conversations were mapped in terms of base r…
The Hispanic health paradox: From epidemiological phenomenon to contribution opportunities for psychological science
Similar to non-Hispanic Blacks, Hispanics/Latinos experience a range of psychosocial and physical health challenges, including high rates of poverty, neighborhood segregation, discrimination, poor healthcare access, and high rates of obesity, diabetes, and undiagnosed and late-stage diagnosed diseases. Despite such risks, Hispanics generally experience better physical health and lower mortality than non-Hispanic Whites, an epidemiological phenome…
Narcissism and the use of personal pronouns revisited
[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 109(3) of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see record 2015-37773-002). The authors erroneously reported the overall correlation, first stated in the abstract, between Narcissism and total first-person-singular use as .02 (.017) instead of .01 (.010). The misreporting of the overall correlation between Narcissism and total use of first-person singular does not change …
Hormones and personality: Testosterone as a marker of individual differences
Depression, negative emotionality, and self-referential language: A multi-lab, multi-measure, and multi-language-task research synthesis
Depressive symptomatology is manifested in greater first-person singular pronoun use (i.e., I-talk), but when and for whom this effect is most apparent, and the extent to which it is specific to depression or part of a broader association between negative emotionality and I-talk, remains unclear. Using pooled data from N = 4,754 participants from 6 labs across 2 countries, we examined, in a preregistered analysis, how the depression-I-talk effect…
Sounds like a narcissist: Behavioral manifestations of narcissism in everyday life
Let me read your mind: Personality judgments based on a person’s natural stream of thought
Cognitive Benefits of Online Social Networking for Healthy Older Adults
Learning and using an online social networking site may provide specific benefits for complex working memory in a group of healthy older adults. This may reflect the particular cognitive demands associated with online social networking and/or the benefits of social engagement more generally
Linguistic Markers of Grandiose Narcissism: A Liwc Analysis of 15 Samples
Narcissism is unrelated to using first-person singular pronouns. Whether narcissism is linked to other language use remains unclear. We aimed to identify linguistic markers of narcissism. We applied the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to texts ( k = 15; N = 4,941). The strongest positive correlates were using words related to sports, second-person pronouns, and swear words. The strongest negative correlates were using anxiety/fear words, tentat…
Are Mexicans more or less sociable than Americans? Insights from a naturalistic observation study
Preliminary evidence of diurnal rhythms in everyday behaviors associated with positive affect
Natural, Everyday Language Use Provides a Window Into the Integrity of Older Adults’ Executive Functioning
This study provides first evidence that the words older adults use in daily life provide a window into their EF
Convergence of naïve coders and participant report ratings of attachment to a former partner: When we should be me
Using a Brunswik lens framework, this study examined whether lay observers could accurately detect participants' attachment to a former partner following romantic breakup or divorce. We predicted that the ratings of post-breakup attachment (completed after reading participants' transcribed stream-of-consciousness discussions of the recent separation) would be associated with participants' self-reported ratings of attachment to a former partner an…
I blame you, I hear you: Couples' pronoun use in conflict and dyadic coping
In dyadic interaction, a verbal focus on one individual ("you-talk," "I-talk"), rather than on the couple ("we-talk") has predominantly been linked to dysfunctional relationship processes. However, context differences in these links have not yet been systematically examined. Is it functional to asymmetrically focus on one partner during support interactions but problematic during conflict? Does a high level of couple-focus represent a resource ac…
Estimating the Prevalence of Gender-Biased Language in Undergraduates’ Everyday Speech
Investigating the Relationship between Resident Physician Implicit Bias and Language Use during a Clinical Encounter with Hispanic Patients
Prior research suggests that the implicit biases of physicians are negatively associated with quality of medical care and patient satisfaction among minority patients. However, relatively little is known about how physicians express these subtle forms of bias in patient interactions. This study examined the implicit and explicit anti-Hispanic biases of 53 resident physicians and the relationship between anti-Hispanic bias and language use during …
Eavesdropping on character: Assessing everyday moral behaviors
Narcissistic power poster? On the relationship between narcissism and status updating activity on Facebook
Eavesdropping on social life: The accuracy of stranger ratings of daily behavior from thin slices of natural conversations
Loneliness and time alone in everyday life: A descriptive-exploratory study of subjective and objective social isolation
Loneliness—the subjective experience of social isolation—is a common experience that can become an enduring feature of everyday life. How does feeling lonely relate to spending time alone? In this descriptive-exploratory study, we used the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), a naturalistic observation tool that samples sounds from participants’ daily lives, to assess time spent alone as an index of social isolation. We combined data from thr…
Sleep efficiency and naturalistically-observed social behavior following marital separation: The critical role of contact with an ex-partner
Marital disruption is associated with increased risk for a range of poor health outcomes, including disturbed sleep. This report examines trajectories of actigraphy-assessed sleep efficiency following marital separation as well as the extent to which daily social behaviors and individual differences in attachment explain variability in these trajectories over time. One hundred twenty-two recently-separated adults ( N = 122) were followed longitud…
Emotional recovery following divorce: Will the real self-compassion please stand up
Self-compassion is a positive psychological construct associated with heightened well-being, but the construct is largely measured via self-report. In a study of divorcing adults ( N = 120), we sought to replicate and extend prior research on the association between self-rated and observed self-compassion, the linguistic cues associated with self-rated and observed self-compassion, and the predictive utility of observed self-compassion. Untrained…
Is frequent sighing an indicator of dispositional negative emotionality? A multi-sample, multi-measure naturalistic-observation study
The Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR): A device for sampling naturalistic daily activities and conversations
Psychological Aspects of Natural Language Use: Our Words, Our Selves
The words people use in their daily lives can reveal important aspects of their social and psychological worlds. With advances in computer technology, text analysis allows researchers to reliably and quickly assess features of what people say as well as subtleties in their linguistic styles. Following a brief review of several text analysis programs, we summarize some of the evidence that links natural word use to personality, social and situatio…
The sounds of social life: A psychometric analysis of students' daily social environments and natural conversations
The natural conversations and social environments of 52 undergraduates were tracked across two 2-day periods separated by 4 weeks using a computerized tape recorder (the Electronically Activated Recorder [EAR]). The EAR was programmed to record 30-s snippets of ambient sounds approximately every 12 min during participants' waking hours. Students' social environments and use of language in their natural conversations were mapped in terms of base r…
Linguistic Markers of Psychological Change Surrounding September 11, 2001
The diaries of 1,084 U.S. users of an on-line journaling service were downloaded for a period of 4 months spanning the 2 months prior to and after the September 11 attacks. Linguistic analyses of the journal entries revealed pronounced psychological changes in response to the attacks. In the short term, participants expressed more negative emotions, were more cognitively and socially engaged, and wrote with greater psychological distance. After 2…
Personality in its natural habitat: Manifestations and implicit folk theories of personality in daily life
To examine the expression of personality in its natural habitat, the authors tracked 96 participants over 2 days using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), which samples snippets of ambient sounds in participants' immediate environments. Participants' Big Five scores were correlated with EAR-derived information on their daily social interactions, locations, activities, moods, and language use; these quotidian manifestations were generally…
Are Women Really More Talkative Than Men?
Women are generally assumed to be more talkative than men. Data were analyzed from 396 participants who wore a voice recorder that sampled ambient sounds for several days. Participants' daily word use was extrapolated from the number of recorded words. Women and men both spoke about 16,000 words per day.
Hormones and personality: Testosterone as a marker of individual differences
Let me read your mind: Personality judgments based on a person’s natural stream of thought
Preliminary evidence of diurnal rhythms in everyday behaviors associated with positive affect
Knowing me, knowing you: The accuracy and unique predictive validity of self-ratings and other-ratings of daily behavior
Many people assume that they know themselves better than anyone else knows them. Recent research on inaccuracies in self-perception, however, suggests that self-knowledge may be more limited than people typically assume. In this article, the authors examine the possibility that people may know a person as well as (or better than) that person knows himself or herself. In Study 1, the authors document the strength of laypeople's beliefs that the se…
Are Mexicans more or less sociable than Americans? Insights from a naturalistic observation study
Eavesdropping on social life: The accuracy of stranger ratings of daily behavior from thin slices of natural conversations
Eavesdropping on Happiness: Well-Being Is Related to Having Less Small Talk and More Substantive Conversations
Reading Between the Lines: The Lay Assessment of Subclinical Depression From Written Self-Descriptions
This study investigated how laypersons assess subclinical depression in others from 2 forms of written self-descriptions: personal diaries and online blogs. Fifty-seven target participants wrote essays describing their personality as they would in each context. Naïve judges then rated targets' depression from the 2 sets of self-descriptions. The judges achieved high and comparable levels of accuracy in the 2 self-descriptions by basing their impr…
Sounds like a narcissist: Behavioral manifestations of narcissism in everyday life
A Positivity Bias in Written and Spoken English and Its Moderation by Personality and Gender
The human tendency to use positive words (“adorable”) more often than negative words (“dreadful”) is called the linguistic positivity bias. We find evidence for this bias in two studies of word use, one based on written corpora and another based on naturalistic speech samples. In addition, we demonstrate that the positivity bias applies to nouns and verbs as well as adjectives. We also show that it is found to the same degree in written as well a…
Talking Shop and Shooting the Breeze: A Study of Workplace Conversation and Job Disengagement Among STEM Faculty
Past research has examined women’s subjective satisfaction in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), but the actual events that correlate with disengagement have not been identified. In this study, workplace conversations of 45 female and male STEM faculty were sampled using the Electronically Activated Recorder, a naturalistic observation method, coded for research or socializing content, and correlated with self-reported job disenga…
Experiential connectedness in children's attachment interviews: An examination of natural word use
Attachment classification derived from narrative analysis is widely used as a marker of psychological organization. In contrast to this top‐down approach, bottom‐up, word count–based analyses of narratives are also used to measure psychological states. The current study integrates these 2 approaches by examining their overlap in 93 school‐aged children. Participants completed the Child Attachment Interview; transcriptions of this interview were s…
Depression and Self-Focused Language in Structured Interviews with Older Men
The association between depression and self-focused language has been found to varying extents across studies. The presence or absence of the association may depend on the communicative context. Based on Beck's depression model, a broad, evaluative self-focused question was predicted more likely to elicit a stronger association than a full interview containing a more heterogeneous question set of items. The spontaneous speech obtained during stru…
Does Posting Facebook Status Updates Increase or Decrease Loneliness? An Online Social Networking Experiment
Online social networking is a pervasive but empirically understudied phenomenon. Strong public opinions on its consequences exist but are backed up by little empirical evidence and almost no causally-conclusive, experimental research. The current study tested the psychological effects of posting status updates on Facebook using an experimental design. For one week, participants in the experimental condition were asked to post more than they usual…
Naturalistic Observation of Health-Relevant Social Processes: The Electronically Activated Recorder Methodology in Psychosomatics
This article introduces a novel observational ambulatory monitoring method called the electronically activated recorder (EAR). The EAR is a digital audio recorder that runs on a handheld computer and periodically and unobtrusively records snippets of ambient sounds from participants' momentary environments. In tracking moment-to-moment ambient sounds, it yields acoustic logs of people's days as they naturally unfold. In sampling only a fraction o…
Language use in the Adult Attachment Interview: Evidence for attachment‐specific emotion regulation
Adult attachment classification is traditionally based on qualitative coding of participants' discourse about their attachment history. Word count‐based analyses have proven useful for assessing emotional states from narrative. To expand the understanding of how language is used in emotion regulation processes related to attachment, the authors assess 102 college‐aged adults' language on the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Autonomous adults use…
Narcissistic power poster? On the relationship between narcissism and status updating activity on Facebook
Ambulatory Assessment: Methods for Studying Everyday Life
Ambulatory assessment is a class of methods that use mobile technology to understand people's biopsychosocial processes in natural settings, in real time, and on repeated occasions. In this essay, we discuss the rationale for ambulatory assessment including the benefits of measuring people in the real world (greater ecological validity, better understanding of people in contexts), in real time (avoidance of memory bias, greater sensitivity for ca…
Narcissism and the use of personal pronouns revisited
[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 109(3) of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see record 2015-37773-002). The authors erroneously reported the overall correlation, first stated in the abstract, between Narcissism and total first-person-singular use as .02 (.017) instead of .01 (.010). The misreporting of the overall correlation between Narcissism and total use of first-person singular does not change …
Psychology (49 works) · Social Psychology (37 works) · Developmental psychology (28 works) · Linguistics (16 works) · Cognitive psychology (15 works) · Clinical Psychology (14 works) · Mental Health via Writing (12 works) · Personality (12 works) · Cognition (10 works) · Personality Traits and Psychology (10 works)