Selected Pennebaker Reprints

This page allows you to see or download a number of papers that are either published, in press, or in draft form. Articles that are listed with an asterisk (*) are in Adobe Acrobat (or pdf) format (go to www.adobe.com to download a free copy of the Acrobat Reader if you can’t open these files). All other papers are Word documents.

Other links of interest:

Pennebaker home page. A gateway to the lab group, classes, and additional research information

Reference List page. A reasonably complete reference list of writing/disclosure articles by a number of different researchers.

Questionnaire page. Some questionnaires that we have developed.

*Campbell, R.S., & Pennebaker, J.W. (2003). The secret life of pronouns: Flexibility in writing style and physical health. Psychological Science, 14, 60-65. Using Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), it was found that changes in the ways people use pronouns when writing about traumatic experience was a powerful predictor of changes in physician visits in three previously-published writing projects.

*Chung, C.K. & Pennebaker, J.W. (2007). The psychological function of function words. In K. Fiedler (Ed.), Social communication: Frontiers of social psychology (pp 343-359). New York: Psychology Press. A summary of recent findings concerning the links between pronouns, prepositions, and other function words with markers of social and personality processes.

*Chung, C.K. & Pennebaker, J.W. (in press). Revealing dimensions of thinking in open-ended self-descriptions: An automated meaning extraction method for natural language. Journal of Research in Personality. By using a factor analytic method on content-related words, it is possible to extract meaning from samples of text files. These language dimensions are linked to personality.

*Cohn, M.A., Mehl, M.R., & Pennebaker, J.W. (2004). Linguistic markers of psychological change surrounding September 11, 2001. Psychological Science, 15, 687-693. An analysis of over 1000 people who wrote online journals in the weeks before and after September 11.

*Davison, K.P, Pennebaker, J.W., & Dickerson, S.S. (2000). Who talks? The social psychology of illness support groups. American Psychologist, 55, 205-217. An analysis of internet and real world support groups for 20 different diseases.

*Gortner, E.-M., & Pennebaker, J.W. (2003). The archival anatomy of a disaster: Media coverage and community-wide health effects of the Texas A&M Bonfire Tragedy. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 22, 580-603. In the months after the A&M bonfire disaster, the newspaper coverage gradually shifted linguistically and students drastically changed the ways they used the student health center.

*Graybeal, A., Sexton, J.D., & Pennebaker, J.W. (2002). The role of story-making in disclosure writing: The psychometrics of narrative. Psychology and Health, 17, 571-581. Judges' ratings of narrative quality are poorly correlated with linguistic markers and, in this study, unrelated to health outcomes. Serious questions about the psychometrics of what makes a good story are raised -- especially in relation to health.

*Linguist Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC2007). The LIWC2007 computer text analysis program is an updated version of LIWC2001. The actual program can be purchased from www.liwc.net. However, the two manuals are available here:
Pennebaker, J.W., Booth, R.E., & Francis, M.E. (2007). Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count: LIWC2007 – Operator’s manual. Austin, TX: LIWC.net.
Pennebaker, J.W., Chung, C.K., Ireland, M., Gonzales, A., & Booth, R.J. (2007). The development and psychometric properties of LIWC2007. Austin, TX: LIWC.net

*Mehl, M.R. & Pennebaker, J.W. (2003). The social dynamics of a cultural upheaval: Social interactions surrounding September 11, 2001. Psychological Science, 14, 579-585. An analysis of 11 people who wore the EAR prior to and for 10 days after September 11.

*Mehl, M.R. & Pennebaker, J.W. (2003). The sounds of social life: A psychometric analysis of students' daily social environments and natural conversations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 857-870. Using the EAR (see below), it is possible to assess the basic psychometric properties of the ways people select their environments and use language in natural settings.

*Mehl, M., Pennebaker, J.W., Crow, D.M., Dabbs, J., & Price, J. (2001). The Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR): A device for sampling naturalistic daily activities and conversations. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 33, 517-523. A description of a recording device that people wear for up to 4 days that records for cycles of 30 seconds on and 12 minutes off.

*Mehl, M.R., Vazire, S., Ramirez-Esparza, N., Slatcher, R.B., & Pennebaker, J.W. (2007). Are women really more talkative than men? Science, 316, 82. (Including supplemental materials). Across six EAR studies with college students in the U.S. and Mexico, tape-recorded conversations over several days reveal that both men and women say about 16,000 words per day. Women and men don’t differ in talking rates.

*Newman, M.L., Groom, C.J., Handelman, L.D., & Pennebaker, J.W. (in press). Gender differences in language use: An analysis of 14,000 text samples. Discourse Processes. Women and men use langauge differently and talk about different things. Women use words that reflect social concerns; men refer to more concrete objects and impersonal topics.

*Newman, M.L., Pennebaker, J.W., Berry, D.S., & Richards, J.M. (2003). Lying words: Predicting deception from linguistic style. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 665-675. An analysis of 5 studies where participants lied and/or told the truth. Truth-tellers use more 1st person singular words, markers of cognitive complexity, and fewer negative emotion words.

* Niederhoffer, K.G. & Pennebaker, J.W. (2002). Linguistic style matching in social interaction. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 21, 337-360. When two people are talking in person or on the computer, they match each other’s linguistic style on a conversation and on a turn-by-turn level. Matching, which with prepositions, articles, and other function words, is unrelated to liking or perceived quality of the interaction.

Pennebaker, J.W. (1994). Hints on running a writing experiment. Unpublished manual. This is a general how-to manual that will help the individual in designing a disclosure experiment -- with particular attention to measurement.

Pennebaker, J.W. (1997). Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotion. New York: Guilford Press. OK, OK. You really can't download this paperback but you can at least read an excerpt of the book.

*Pennebaker, J.W. (1997). Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological Science, 8, 162-166. A brief overview of the nature of the writing paradigm and its effects on physical health.

*Pennebaker, J.W. (1982). The psychology of physical symptoms. New York: Springer-Verlag. Warning: This is very large file since it is the entire book that is now out of print.

*Pennebaker, J.W. (1999). Psychological factors influencing the reporting of physical symptoms. In A.A. Stone, J.S. Turkkan, C.A. Bachrach, J.B. Jobe, H.S. Kurtzman, and V.S. Cain (Eds), The science of self-report: Implications for research and practice (pp 299-316). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Publishers. A summary of research on how self-reports of physical symptoms and emotions are affected by perceptual, cognitive, biological, and personality factors.

*Pennebaker, J.W. (2002). What our words can say about us: Toward a broader language psychology. Psychological Science Agenda, 15, 8-9. A brief and light summary of recent findings concerning the power of words in revealing personality and social situations.

*Pennebaker, J.W. (2004). Theories, therapies, and taxpayers: On the complexities of the expressive writing paradigm. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 11, 138-142. A review of recent research and thinking about expressive writing. No one theory explains it. In evaluating expressive writing, we need to be attentive to economically-relevant outcome measures, i.e., think of research from the taxpayers' perspective.

*Pennebaker, J.W. & Banasik, B. (1997). On the creation and maintenance of collective memories: History as social psychology. In J.W. Pennebaker, D. Paez & B. Rimé (Eds.). Collective memory of political events: Social psychological perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Publishers. An examination how collective memories associated with the JFK assassination, the Loma Prieta earthquake, Persian Gulf War, and other upheavals are made through social processes.

*Pennebaker, J.W. & Chung, C.K. (2007). Expressive writing, emotional upheavals, and health. In H. Friedman and R. Silver (Eds.), Handbook of health psychology (pp 263-284). New York: Oxford University Press. The most recent summary of the expressive writing research.

*Pennebaker, J.W. & Chung, C.K. (in press). Computerized text analysis of Al-Qaeda transcripts. In K. Krippendorff and M. Bock (Eds), A content analysis reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

*Pennebaker, J.W. & Graybeal, A. (2001). Patterns of natural language use: Disclosure, personality, and social integration. Current Directions, 10, 90-93. A recent update on the disclosure paradigm with particular attention paid to the social dynamics of writing and language.

*Pennebaker, J.W., Groom, C.J., Loew, D., & Dabbs, J.M. (2004). Testosterone as a social inhibitor: Two case studies of the effect of testosterone treatment on language. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 113, 172-175. The personal diary or outgoing emails of two people (one a female-to-male transexual; another a heterosexual male) undergoing testosterone treatment were tracked over 1-2 years. LIWC analyses found that testosterone injections suppressed participants’ reference to other people.

*Pennebaker, J.W., & Harber, K.D. (1993). A social stage model of collective coping: The Loma Prieta Earthquake and the Persian Gulf War. Journal of Social Issues, 49, 125-145. A summary of two studies examining normal individuals in the United States and their reactions about these events over time -- from within hours after the earthquake or outbreak of war to a year later.

*Pennebaker, J.W., Kiecolt-Glaser, J., & Glaser, R. (1988). Disclosure of traumas and immune function: Health implications for psychotherapy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 56, 239-245. The first writing study to demonstrate that disclosure of emotional upheavals can influence immune function.

*Pennebaker, J.W. & King, L.A. (1999). Linguistic styles: Language use as an individual difference. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1296-1312. A series of studies that reveal how language use reflects personality, health, and social behaviors.

*Pennebaker, J.W. & Lay, T.C. (2002). Language use and personality during crises: Analyses of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's press conferences. Journal of Research in Personality, 36, 271-282. Linguistic analyses of the way Giuliani changed in his use of language from his first years as mayor through his personal crises in mid-2000 and in the aftermath of theWorld Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001.

*Pennebaker, J.W., Mayne, T.J., & Francis, M.E. (1997). Linguistic predictors of adaptive bereavement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 863-871. The first study from our lab to show that certain linguistic fingerprints predict longterm health improvement among participants in various writing studies.

*Pennebaker, J.W., Mehl, M.R., & Niederhoffer, K. (2003). Psychological aspects of natural language use: Our words, our selves. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 547-577. A general review of text analysis approaches in the social sciences -- with primary attention to word count strategies. This extensive literature review also summarizes work linking pronouns, prepositions, and other particles to social, personality, and clinical psychology.

*Pennebaker, J.W., Paez, D., Deschamps, J.C., Rentfrow, J., Davis, M., Techio, E.M., Slawuta, P., Zlobina, A., & Zubieta, E. (2006). The social psychology of history: Defining the most important events of the last 10, 100, and 1000 years. Psicologia Politica, 32, 15-32. A summary of a large cross-cultural project wherein students reported on significant national and cultural events.

*Pennebaker, J.W. & Seagal, J. (1999). Forming a story: The health benefits of narrative. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55, 1243-1254. A summary of recent disclosure studies with an eye towards understanding the nature of narrative.

*Pennebaker, J.W., Slatcher, R.B., & Chung, C.K. (2004). Linguistic Markers of Psychological State through Media Interviews: John Kerry and John Edwards in 2004, Al Gore in 2000. Unpublished technical report. Austin, TX: The University of Texas. An analysis of the language use of John Kerry and John Edwards in televised interviews during the Democratic presidential campaign. Preliminary results suggest that Kerry has many linguistic similarities to Al Gore in his interviews during the 2000 election cycle.

*Pennebaker, J.W. & Stone, L.D. (2003). Words of wisdom: Language use over the lifespan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 291-301. As people age, the words they use in everyday language changes. This is based on analysis of over 3000 individuals writing about emotional topics and the collected works of 10 famous authors.

*Petrie, K.P., Booth, R.J., & Pennebaker, J.W. (1998). The immunological effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1264-1272. An experiment that demonstrates when people try to suppress their thoughts about traumatic experiences, immune changes result.

*Petrie, K.P., Pennebaker, J.W., & Sivertsen, B. (2008). The things we said today: A linguistic analysis of the Beatles. Psychology of Aethetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 2, 197-202. A language analysis of the history of the Beatles, including a comparison of the lyrics of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison.

*Richards, J.M., Beal, W.E., Seagal, J., & Pennebaker, J.W. (2000). The effects of disclosure of traumatic events on illness behavior among psychiatric prison inmates. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 109, 156-160. Writing about traumatic experiences improves the health of maximum security inmates -- especially those convicted of sexual crimes.

Ramírez-Esparza, N., Gosling, S.D., Benet-Martínez, V., Potter, J., & Pennebaker, J.W. (2005). Do bilinguals have two personalities? A special case of frame switching. Journal of Research in Personality. When bilinguals switch languages, their personalities subtly change.

*Roberts, T.A. & Pennebaker, J.W. (1995). Women's and men's strategies in perceiving internal state. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 27 (pp 143-176). New York: Academic Press. Women and men perceive their bodies, symptoms, and physical health differently. We propose that women rely more on external situational cues relative to men.

*Rude, S.S., Gortner, E.M., & Pennebaker, J.W. (2004). Language use of depressed and depression-vulnerable college students. Cognition and Emotion, 18, 1121-1133. Depressed students use more first person singular pronouns than never-depressed when writing about their college experiences. Formerly-depressed students initially use few pronouns but, by the end of the writing exercise, use pronouns like currently-depressed students.

*Slatcher, R.B., Chung, C.K., Pennebaker, J.W., & Stone, L.D. (2007). Winning words: Individual differences in linguistic style among U.S. presidential and vice presidential candidates. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 63-75. The candidates in the 2004 presidential election used language in strikingly different ways.

*Slatcher, R.B. & Pennebaker, J.W. (2006). How do I love thee? Let me count the words: The social effects of expressive writing. Psychological Science, 17, 660-664. A study using expressive writing that finds that people who write about their relationship are more likely to remain in that relationship. Also, the analysis of Instant Messages (IMs) finds that certain word-use patterns correlates with relationship success.

*Spera, S.P., Buhrfeind, E.D., & Pennebaker, J.W. (1994). Expressive writing and coping with job loss. Academy of Management Journal, 37, 722-733. High level engineers who lost their jobs were more likely to be re-employed if they wrote about their job loss than those who either did not write or who wrote about time management.

*Stirman, S.W., & Pennebaker, J.W. (2001). Word use in the poetry of suicidal and non-suicidal poets. Psychosomatic Medicine 63, 517-522. A text analysis of the poetry of poets who committed suicide vs a matched control who did not -- promising evidence for the power of linguistic tools to understand psychological state.

*Stone, L.D. & Pennebaker, J.W. (2002). Trauma in real time: Talking and avoiding online conversations about the death of Princess Diana. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 24, 172-182. A text analysis of the ways people talked about the death of Princess Diana on AOL chat groups.

*Watson, D. & Pennebaker, J.W. (1989). Health complaints, stress, and disease: Exploring the central role of negative affectivity. Psychological Review, 96, 234-254. Self-reports of stress and physical symptoms are often colored by people’s general Negative Affectivity (NA) or neuroticism.