What Were They Thinking? Analytic and Cognitive Language in Instagram Captions

Sheila Brownlow*, Makenna Pate, Abigail Alger and Natalie Naturile

What Were They Thinking? Analytic and Cognitive Language in Instagram Captions.

Men and low-status persons used more functional analytic language, demonstrating critical thought; in contrast, high-status celebrities showed more causality. Women more than men “qualified” their speech with discrepancy. These findings were not a function of sentence length. Emotional language, for example, signals important aspects of the speaker, including sex and status. Women more than men use language with positive emotion, as do those high in extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness.

Status and sex also influence the use of the function words that mirror a focus on the self, as seen via the first-person pronoun “I”. On Twitter, for example, women and lower-status persons used “I” in their Tweets, but “I” was equal in both women and men of higher social status. The use of an informal and friendly style that includes self-referencing is seen in men of lower social status, perhaps in effort to engage more people and enhance their own status through more self referencing. The use of “I” signals a more “narrative” or “story-like” approach to provide perspective, omitting sophisticated language, and avoiding cognitive mechanisms.

Analytic thought as expressed in language is decreasing as technology, issue-complexity, and global political shifts toward populism are increasing. Analytic language includes the use of articles and prepositions designed to show connections and critical relations among points. On the other hand, the “informal” style includes more narrative, ideas, actions, and stories.

The results of this study revealed men and low-status persons, in comparison to women and high-status celebrities, used language that showed more “analytic” expression designed to demonstrate
critical thought. Yet, high-status celebrities captioned their visuals with more causality. Women employed discrepancy “hedging” their language somewhat. The findings were not a function of words per sentence.

Soc Behav Res Pract Open J
. 2019; 4(1): 21-25. doi: 10.17140/SBRPOJ-4-117

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