Analytic Thinking as Revealed by Function Words: What Does Language Really Measure?

Understanding how people think is a key interest in psychology, and recent advances in automated text analysis have used a verbal analytic thinking index to approximate Kahneman’s System 2 (e.g., deliberate, deep thinking). That is, prior work used a style word index to assess university student admissions essays and observed that those who used more articles and prepositions relative to storytelling words (e.g., pronouns) had higher grades at the end of college. This work presumed that verbal analytic thinking represented one’s cognitive ability or intellectual potential, but this presumption has remained untested. The current research evaluated if verbal analytic thinking is indeed a reflection of cognitive ability or one’s interest and motivation to engage in deep thinking, called need for cognition. Across 500 participants and two writing samples, the most reliable link to verbal analytic thinking was need for cognition, addressing an untested empirical question in psychology of language research.