​Extraverts more likely to use words like ‘love’ or ‘happy’ — and retailers have taken notice

Researchers from NTU Singapore say extroverts are more likely to use words that describe a pleasant emotional state, like love or happy. This information may mean big business for retailers. The study reveals a correlation between extraverts and their tendency to use “positive emotion words” and “social process words.” Psychologists define positive emotion words as words that describe a pleasant emotional state, such as love, happy, or blessed, or that indicate positivity or optimism, such as beautiful or nice. Social process words include words containing personal pronouns except ‘I’, and words showing social intentions, such as meet, share, and talk. “This is the first time a relationship has been established between extraverts and their tendency to use the two categories of words,” says principal investigator Lin Qiu from NTU Singapore. “As it is a small correlation, we believe that stronger linguistic indicators are needed to improve machine learning approaches, amid rising interest in such tools in consumer marketing.”