Ewa Kacewicz
homepage:http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/students/kacewicz/
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Description

My research focuses on the communication styles linked with people in differing hierarchical positions. Language use can reflect psychological states, thus differences in language use can provide a window into peoples thoughts, attentionional focuses and feelings associated with position in the social hierachy. Insight into the psychological processes underlying status relationships can clue us into group dynamics in general and help tap strategies to improve group functioning. Using natural language as a tool, we can uncover language associated with leadership effectiveness, positive group dynamics and much more.

Other colleagues within my lab focus on how verbal mimicry is associated with various features of social relationships, differences between depressed and non-depressed individuals, personality in bilinguals, and methods to guide our language findings.

Language and Social Hierarchies

One of my research interests involves uncovering the links between status and language. Rather than focusing on content words (i.e. nouns, verbs, etc), we are interested in linguistic style, function words (i.e. pronouns, prepositions, etc). Markers of linguistic style have been shown to reflect emotional states, personality, and other features of social relationships. We have evidence that people in differing positions of the status hierarchy reliably use languaguage differently across a variety of lab and naturalistic settings. We interpret this as a sign that different positions within the hierarchy have different corresponding psychological states.

Status Self-Enhancement and Language

Research demonstrates that unlike some other domains, people are fairly accurate when it comes to perceptions of status, which supports the idea that status hierarchies are functional. In order to maintain group functioning and harmonial relations, it is beneficial for people to differentiate based on status and adhere to the associated roles. People who self-enhance their status cause conflict within a group, which in turn is associated with poorer group performance. We are currently investigating what linguistic features distinguish these individuals and how this knowledge can contribute to effective group functioning and performance.

Linguistic Differences associated with Effective Leadership

Are there differences in the way effective leaders communicate? We are currently exploring this by examining what sorts of language predict successful lecturing style


Lecture:

lecture
flag The Psychology of Word Use in Depression Forums in English and in Spanish
as coauthor at  2nd International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), Seattle 2008,
together with: James W. Pennebaker (coauthor), Nairan Ramírez-Esparza, Cindy K. Chung (coauthor),
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