There are hidden messages in everything you write or say, according to James Pennebaker, chair of the department of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. 

He spoke recently with Scientific American’s Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook about how we use “I,” “we,” and “who” reveals more about us than we think.

(via newshour)

Basically, we discovered that in any interaction, the person with the higher status uses I-words less (yes, less) than people who are low in status….Higher GPAs were associated with admission essays that used high rates of nouns and low rates of verbs and pronouns. The effects were surprisingly strong and lasted across all years of college, no matter what the students’ major.

Really interesting article! Part of my undergrad thesis looked at pronouns and how they iterated the racial prejudice in a 17th century novel, so I’m kind of dorking out over this.