Women are Warmer but No Less Assertive than Men: Gender and Language on Facebook

How do women and men use words differently? While language use typically differs minimally across self-reported gender, statistical models can accurately classify an author’s gender affiliation with accuracies exceeding 90% [1], suggesting that some differences do indeed exist. Black box statistical models, however, provide little insight into the psychological meaning of these gender differences. In this study, we combine techniques from computational linguistics with established psychological theory. Through an exploration of the language of over 68,000 participants, language analysis identified the linguistic features that most differentiate language used by either self-reported females or males.