Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Markers of Narcissism

Holtzman, Nicholas S., Allison M. Tackman, Albrecht Kuefner, Fenne große Deters, Mitja Back, Brent Donnellan, James W. Pennebaker, et al. 2018. “LIWC Markers of Narcissism: An Exploratory LIWC Analysis of 15 Samples.” PsyArXiv. August 8. doi:10.31234/osf.io/yvna6

Abstract: Narcissism is virtually unrelated to using first-person singular pronouns (Carey et al., [2015] Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109). The degree to which narcissism is linked to other aspects of language use, however, remains unclear. We conducted a multi-site, multi-measure, and dual-language project to identify potential linguistic markers of narcissism. We applied the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program to a large number of written and spoken texts across 15 samples (total N = 4,941). The strongest positive correlates of narcissism were: using words related to sports, second-person pronouns, and swear words. The strongest negative correlates of narcissism were: using anxiety/fear words, tentative words, and words related to sensory/perceptual processes. All effects were small (each |r| less than .10).