Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Personality expression and recognition in Chinese language usage

  • Published:
User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Personality plays a pivotal role at work. Many scholars have investigated the association between personality and language usage habits in the English corpus. Given that the Chinese language has the largest number of native speakers in the world, it is essential to analyze the pattern of personality expression in Chinese, which has garnered less attention. In this study, we used the TextMind system to examine the correlation between word categories and personality traits based on Chinese Weibo content. We also compared the results with previous studies to demonstrate the similarities and differences of personality expression between English and Chinese. Additionally, this paper established a prediction model based on machine learning methods to recognize personality. Results showed that language features were powerful indicators of personality. Finally, we made recommendations for using personality expression in the recruitment and selection.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. https://www.sohu.com/a/376087332_114760.

  2. The first factor included six word categories, three of which were cognitive process categories including tentative, exclusive and discrepancy words, and three were functional categories including impersonal pronouns, adverbs, and conjunctions. This factor was similar to the making distinction factor in English which included tentative, exclusive and discrepancy words (Pennebaker and King 1999). Therefore, this factor was termed making distinction.

  3. The second factor encompassed five word categories, including tense marker, insight, interjunction, assent, and a secondary loading of adverbs. This factor contained thoughtful discussions of the past, present and future, thus was named reflection.

  4. The third factor included eight word categories, namely, time, space, numbers, quantity unit, fewer non-fluencies, fewer positive emotions and a secondary loading of fewer assent. This factor described time, space, and objects, therefore was termed objective description.

  5. The fourth factor contained social words and first- and second-person singular pronouns. It captured social interaction and personal attention and was labeled socialization.

  6. In Chinese, to convey the time node of “in a moment,” one can use multiple expressions, for examples, guoyihui (过一会), denghui (等会), piankehou (片刻后), shaodeng (稍等).

  7. Some punctuation marks in Chinese are not found in English, such as “、” plays a role of separating the juxtaposition in a sentence in Chinese, which does not exist in English; “《》” is used as title marks in Chinese; “.” is used between the month and date, and between the translated given name and family name in Chinese; “………”, or solid dots underneath the text, are used to indicate emphasis.

References

  • Aaronson, D., Ferres, S.: The impact of language differences on language processing: an example from Chinese–English bilingualism. In: Homet, P., Palij, M., Aaronson, D. (eds.) Childhood Bilingualism: Aspects of Linguistic, Cognitive, and Social Development, pp. 75–119. Erlbaum, Hillsdale (1987)

    Google Scholar 

  • Alam, F., Stepanov, E.A., Riccardi, G.: Personality traits recognition on social network-facebook. In: Proceedings of Workshop on Computational Personality Recognition, pp. 6–9. AAAI Press, Melon Park, CA (2013)

  • Back, M.D., Stopfer, J.M., Vazire, S., Gaddis, S., Schmukle, S.C., Egloff, B., Gosling, S.D.: Facebook profiles reflect actual personality, not self-idealization. Psychol. Sci. 21(3), 372–374 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • Bai, S., Zhu, T., Cheng, L.: Big-five personality prediction based on user behaviors at social network sites. Comput. Sci. 8(2), e2682–e2682 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  • Bargh, J.A., McKenna, K.Y., Fitzsimons, G.M.: Can you see the real me? Activation and expression of the ‘‘true self’’ on the Internet. J. Soc. Issues 58(1), 33–48 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  • Borgatti, S.P., Molina, J.: Toward ethical guidelines for network research in organizations. Soc. Netw. 27(2), 107–117 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  • Brislin, R.W.: Back-translation for cross-cultural research. J. Cross Cult. Psychol. 1(3), 185–216 (1970)

    Google Scholar 

  • Celli, F., Lepri, B., Biel, J.I., Gatica-Perez, D., Riccardi, G., Pianesi, F.: The workshop on computational personality recognition 2014. In: Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Multimedia—MM’14, pp. 1245–1246 (2014)

  • Chan, M., Wu, X., Hao, Y.Q., Xi, R., Jin, T.: Microblogging, online expression, and political efficacy among young Chinese citizens: the moderating role of information and entertainment needs in the use of Weibo. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw. 15(7), 345–349 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  • Chen, S.X., Bond, M.H.: Two languages, two personalities? Examining language effects on the expression of personality in a bilingual context. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 36(11), 1514–1528 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, A.S., Minor, K.S., Baillie, L.E., Dahir, A.M.: Clarifying the linguistic signature: measuring personality from natural speech. J. Pers. Assess. 90, 559–563 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  • Corff, Y.L., Toupin, J.: The five-factor model of personality at the facet level: association with antisocial personality disorder symptoms and prediction of antisocial behavior. J. Psychopathol. Behav. Asses. 32(4), 586–594 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • Costa, P.T., McCrae, R.: The revised NEO personality inventory (NEO-PI-R). In: Boyles, G., Matthews, G., Saklofske, D. (eds.) The SAGE Handbook of Personality Theory and Assessment: Volume 2-Personality Measurement and Testing, pp. 179–199. Sage, London (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  • Crowne, D.P., Marlowe, D.: A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology. J. Consult. Psychol. 24(4), 349–354 (1960)

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellingson, J.E., Sackett, P.R., Hough, L.M.: Social desirability corrections in personality measurement: issues of applicant comparison and construct validity. J. Appl. Psychol. 84(2), 155–166 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  • Farnadi, G., Sitaraman, G., Sushmita, S., Celli, F., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D., De Cock, M.: Computational personality recognition in social media. User Model. User Adapt. Inter. 26(2–3), 109–142 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  • Farnadi, G., Zoghbi, S., Moens, M.-F., De Cock, M.: Recognising personality traits using facebook status updates. In: Proceedings of Workshop on Computational Personality Recognition, pp. 14–18. AAAI Press, Melon Park, CA (2013)

  • Fast, L.A., Funder, D.C.: Personality as manifest in word use: correlations with self-report, acquaintance report, and behavior. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 94, 334–346 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  • Freud, S.: Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Basic Books, New York (1901)

    Google Scholar 

  • Gao, R., Hao, B., Li, H., Gao, Y., Zhu, T.: Developing simplified Chinese psychological linguistic analysis dictionary for microblog. In: International Conference on Brain and Health Informatics, pp. 359–368. Maebashi, Japan (2013)

  • Gill, A., Oberlander, J.: Perception of email personality at zero-acquaintance: extraversion takes care of itself; neuroticism is a worry. In: Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 456–461. Boston, MA (2003)

  • Golbeck, J., Robles, C., Turner, K.: Predicting personality with social media. In: Proceeding of the 2011 Annual Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA’11, pp. 253–262. New York, USA (2011a)

  • Golbeck, J., Robles, C., Edmondson, M., Turner, T.: Predicting personality from twitter. In: Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Social Computing, pp. 149–156 (2011b)

  • Goldberg, L.R.: The development of markers for the big-five factor structure. Psychol. Assess. 4(1), 26–42 (1992)

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldberg, L.R.: Language and individual differences: the search for universals in personality lexicons. In: Wheeler, L. (ed.) Review of Personality and Social Psychology, 2(1), pp. 141–165. Sage, Beverly Hills (1981)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hanewald, R.: Confronting the pedagogical challenge of cyber safety. Aust. J. Teach. Edu. 33(3), 1–16 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  • Holtgraves, T.: Text messaging, personality, and the social context. J. Res. Pers. 45(1), 92–99 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch, J.B., Peterson, J.B.: Personality and language use in self-narratives. J. Res. Pers. 43, 524–527 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  • Iacobelli, F., Culotta, A.: Too neurotic, not too friendly: structured personality classification on textual data. In: Proceeding of the Workshop on Computational Personality Recognition, pp. 19–22. AAAI Press, Melon Park, CA (2013)

  • Juan, H., Yamikani, N., Xuefei, P., Shuangyi, C., Fei, X., Xiaochu, Z.: Weibo or wechat? Assessing preference for social networking sites and role of personality traits and psychological factors. Front. Psychol. 9, 545 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D., Graepel, T.: Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110(15), 5802–5805 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  • Lacan, J.: The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore (1968)

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, C.H., Kim, K., Seo, Y.S., Chung, C.K.: The relations between personality and language use. J. Gen. Psychol. 134(4), 405–413 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  • Lepri, B., Staiano, J., Shmueli, E., Pianesi, F., Pentland, A.: The role of personality in shaping social networks and mediating behavioral change. User Model. User Adapt. Inter. 26(2), 143–175 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  • Li, C.N., Thompson, S.A.: Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. University of California Press, London (1989)

    Google Scholar 

  • Light, T., Henne, H., Rongen, O.B., Hansen, L.J.: A handbook on Chinese language structure. J. Asian Stud. 38(2), 376 (1979)

    Google Scholar 

  • Lim, J.S., Nicholson, J., Yang, S.U., Kim, H.K.: Online authenticity, popularity, and the “real me” in a microblogging environment. Comput. Hum. Behav. 52, 132–143 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  • Liu, B.: Effect of first language on the use of English discourse markers by L1 Chinese speakers of English. J. Pragmat. 45(1), 149–172 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  • Mairesse, F., Walker, M.A., Mehl, M.R., Moore, R.K.: Using linguistic cues for the automatic recognition of personality in conversation and text. J. Artif. Intell. Res. 30, 457–500 (2007)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Mairesse, F., Walker, M.A.: Towards personality-based user adaptation: psychologically informed stylistic language generation. User Model. User Adapt. Inter. 20(3), 227–278 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • Majumder, N., Poria, S., Gelbukh, A., Cambria, E.: Deep learning-based document modeling for personality detection from text. IEEE Intell. Syst. 32(2), 74–79 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  • Matthews, G., Deary, I.J., Whiteman, M.C.: Personality Traits, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Books Online (2003)

  • McCrae, R.R., Costa Jr., P.T.: Personality trait structure as a human universal. Am. Psychol. 52, 509–516 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  • Mehl, M.R., Gosling, S.D., Pennebaker, J.W.: Personality in its natural habitat: manifestations and implicit folk theories of personality in daily life. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 90(5), 862–877 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  • Morris, J.A., Feldman, D.C.: The dimensions, antecedents, and consequences of emotional labor. Acad. Mana. Rev. 21(4), 986–1010 (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  • Norman, W.T.: 2800 Personality Trait Descriptors: Normative Operating Characteristics for a University Population. Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1967)

    Google Scholar 

  • Nowson, S., & Oberlander, J.: Identifying more bloggers: towards large scale personality classification of personal weblogs. In: Proceedings of the International Conference Personality Traits Recognition on Social Non Weblogs and Social Media (2007)

  • Park, G., Schwartz, H.A., Eichstaedt, J.C., Kern, M.L., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D.J., Seligman, M.E.P.: Automatic personality assessment through social media language. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 108(6), 934–952 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  • Paul, L.M., Simons, G.F., Fennig, C.D.: Ethnologue: Languages of the World. SIL International, Dallas (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  • Peng, K.H., Liou, L.H., Chang, C.S., Lee, D.S.: Predicting personality traits of Chinese users based on Facebook wall posts. In: 2015 24th Wireless and Optical Communication Conference (WOCC), Taipei, 2015, pp. 9–14 (2015)

  • Pennebaker, J.W., Mehl, M.R., Niederhoffer, K.G.: Psychological aspects of natural language use: our words, our selves. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 54(1), 547–577 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  • Pennebaker, J.W., Booth, R.J., Francis, M.E.: Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count: LIWC 2007. LIWC, Austin (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  • Pennebaker, J.W., King, L.A.: Linguistic styles: language use as an individual difference. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 77(6), 1296–1312 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  • Pennebaker, J.W., Boyd, R.L., Jordan, K., Blackburn, K.: The Development and Psychometric Properties of LIWC2015. University of Texas at Austin, Austin (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  • Qiu, L., Lin, H., Ramsay, J., Yang, F.: You are what you tweet: personality expression and perception on twitter. J. Res. Pers. 46(6), 710–718 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  • Qiu, L., Lu, J., Ramsay, J., Yang, S., Qu, W., Zhu, T.: Personality expression in Chinese language use. Int. J. Psychol. 52(6), 463–472 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  • Sanford, F.H.: Speech and personality. Psychol. Bull. 39(10), 811–845 (1942)

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, H.A., Eichstaedt, J.C., Kern, M.L., Dziurzynski, L., Ramones, S.M., Agrawal, M., Ungar, L.H.: Personality, gender, and age in the language of social media: the open vocabulary approach. PLoS ONE 8, 773–791 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, N.: The language of weblogs: a study of genre and individual differences. PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh (2006)

  • Skowron, M., Tkalčič, M., Ferwerda, B., Schedl, M.: Fusing social media cues. In: Proceedings of the 25th International Conference Companion on World Wide Web—WWW ‘16 Companion, pp. 107–108 (2016)

  • Smith, K.A., Dennis, M., Masthoff, J., Tintarev, N.: A methodology for creating and validating psychological stories for conveying and measuring psychological traits. User Model. User Adapt. Interact. 29, 573–618 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  • Stirman, S.W., Pennebaker, J.W.: Word use in the poetry of suicidal and nonsuicidal poets. Psychosom. Med. 63, 517–522 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  • Tausczik, Y.R., Pennebaker, J.W.: The psychological meaning of words: lIWC and computerized text analysis methods. J. Lang. Soc. Psychol. 29(1), 24–54 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • Tellegen, A.: Folk concepts and psychological concepts of personality and personality disorder. Psychol. Inq. 4, 122–130 (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  • Tkalčič, M., Quercia, D., Graf, S.: Preface to the special issue on personality in personalized systems. User Model. User Adapt. Inter. 26(2–3), 103–107 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  • Triandis, H.C., Suh, E.M.: Cultural influences on personality. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 53, 133–160 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  • Allen, A.: Selling and the salesman: prediction of success and personality change. Psychol. Rep. 38(3_suppl), 1175–1180 (1976)

    Google Scholar 

  • Yarkoni, T.: Personality in 100,000 words: a large-scale analysis of personality and word use among bloggers. J. Res. Pers. 44, 363–373 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • Yee, N., Harris, H., Jabon, M., Bailenson, J.N.: The expression of personality in virtual worlds. Soc. Psychol. Personal. Sci. 2(1), 5–12 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, L., Pentina, I.: Motivations and usage patterns of Weibo. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw. 15(6), 312–317 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Dr. Junjie Wu’s work was partially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFB2101804), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71725002, 71531001, U1636210).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, No. 37 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100191, China

    Cuixin Yuan & Junjie Wu

  2. Gabelli School of Business, Fordham University, New York, USA

    Ying Hong

  3. Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Big Data and Brain Computing, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Junjie Wu

Authors
  1. Cuixin Yuan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ying Hong
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Junjie Wu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Cuixin Yuan and Ying Hong. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Cuixin Yuan. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Junjie Wu.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Yuan, C., Hong, Y. & Wu, J. Personality expression and recognition in Chinese language usage. User Model User-Adap Inter 31, 121–147 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11257-020-09276-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11257-020-09276-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation