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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 31, No. 4, 536-548 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167204271714
© 2005 Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

"A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words": Language Use in the Autophotographic Essay

Philip A. Burke

Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, pburke{at}siu.edu, dollngr{at}siu.edu

Stephen J. Dollinger

Southern Illinois University-Carbondale

The authors applied Pennebaker’s Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program to autophotographic essays addressing the question, "Who are you?" to test hypotheses about individuality and social connectedness. Specifically, the authors tested whether insight-oriented words would correlate with individuality ratings, defining essays that portray unique persons who creatively explore the self. Second, the authors tested whether connectedness, operationalized by photos of people-touching and self with others, would correlate with social process words. In 164 student photo essays, greater linguistic cognitive complexity characterized individuality, even when controlling for needs for cognition and uniqueness, and verbal intelligence. Connectedness predicted social words. These findings show that autophotography essays do capture complex self-reflective thought and suggest LIWC may be a valuable tool for understanding the expression of individuality and relatedness.

Key Words: individuality • photography • text analysis • self • personality


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