A Computational Text Analysis Investigation of the Relation Between Personal and Linguistic Agency

We examined whether and how linguistic agency and personal agency relate. We conducted three studies in which we used experimental and ecological methods in samples of online participants and social media users to provide evidence that passive voice use is indicative of people’s personal sense of agency. In Study 1 (N = 835) we show that participants’ sense of personal agency affects their use of agentive language. In Study 2 (N = 2.7M) we show that increased personal agency (operationalized as one’s social media “influence”) is associated with more agentive language. In Study 3 (N = 43,140) capitalizing on an online forum on depression, we demonstrate that the language of individuals who suffer from a diminished sense of personal agency (due to depression) is less agentive. Together, these findings advance our understanding of the nuanced relationship between language and thought and the link between personal and linguistic agency.