The VP Debate: Biden vs Palin

It’s official.  Biden and Palin speak differently — but not in the ways many people think.  Biden uses language in a way that suggests he is more personal, honest (higher rates of I), and socially engaged (third person pronouns) whereas Palin is surprisingly emotionally distant ( more “we” words).  Palin uses more positive emotion words more than Biden but doesn’t differ from him in the use of negative emotions. 

The most striking differences appeared for a variety of cognitive dimensions.  As a thinker, Biden proved to be more specific and concrete (higher use of articles and nouns), concerned with specific numbers, and showed signs of being more cognitively complex in talking about issues (exclusive words). Palin, on the other hand, proved to be someone who thinks more about the perspectives of others — especially her audience.  Through her use of cognitive mechanism words (e.g., words like realize, think, believe), she was subtly acknowledging that there were different answers or approaches to the issues.  She is not the narrow-minded true believer many of her critics were hoping to see.  Not surprisingly, Palin was not as crisp or polished in her thinking and in her answers as Biden.  The best evidence for this was her complicated sentence structure (prepositions) and high rates of conjuctions and inclusive words — general markers of rambling and vagueness.

More to follow.  But in the meantime, here are the numbers:

Category	Examples	Biden	Palin		Interpretation
Word count		7372	7741	*	Palin talks more
Words per sentence		16.13	19.50	**	Palin longer sentences
Big words (over 6 letters)		16.05	16.81		Palin bigger words
Personal pronouns		9.06	8.68
1st person singular	I, me, my	3.02	2.31	*	Biden more personal
1st person plural	We, our	2.18	3.51	**	Palin more formal, distant
2nd person	You, yours	1.25	1.51		Palin more aggressive, pointed
3rd person singular	He, she, her	1.34	0.89	*	Biden more social
3rd person plural	They, them	1.26	0.45	*	Biden more social
Indefinite pronouns	It, those	6.12	7.76	**	Palin more vague
Articles	A, the	7.21	5.65	**	Biden more concrete, less abstract
Verbs	Walk, went	16.02	15.22		Biden more dynamic
Auxiliary verbs	Is, have	10.46	10.09
Past tense	Was, gave	3.89	3.02
Present tense	Am, is	9.63	9.97
Future tense	will	1.28	0.98
Common adverbs	Very, really	4.07	6.19	**	Palin more “flowery”
Prepositions	To, for, of	13.51	14.66	*	Palin more detailed
Conjunctions	And, or, whereas	5.64	8.16	**	Palin more extended sentences
Negations	No, not, never	2.20	1.51	*	Biden censoring himself
Quantifiers	Much, few	2.22	2.61
Numbers	Six, 12	2.43	0.92	**	Biden more specific
Social references	Friend, we, talk	10.66	10.75
Overall emotion words	Happy, hurt, kill	4.69	5.58
Positive emotions	Happy, nice	3.35	4.25	*	Palin more positive
Negative emotions	Sad, nasty, bad	1.45	1.34
Anxiety, fear	Worry, scared	0.12	0.13
Anger	Angry, hate	0.64	0.78
Sadness	Depressed, cry	0.15	0.14
Cognitive mechanisms	Think, should	16.26	18.41	**	Palin more social thinking
Insight	Realize, know	1.55	1.87
Causal	Because, reason	2.02	2.07
DIscrepancy	Would,could	1.56	1.69
Tentative	Maybe, perhaps	1.75	1.38
Certainty	Absolute, certainly	1.84	1.49
Inhibition	Blocked, stop	0.56	0.44
Inclusive words	With, and	5.41	7.67	**	Palin over inclusive
Exclusive words	Except, but	2.62	2.36	*	Biden more cognitively complex
Relativity	Times, going, over	12.09	12.58
Motion	Went, fly	2.16	2.20
Space	Area, under	5.83	6.72
Time	Hour, clock	3.95	3.46
Content Categories
Work	Job, paycheck	3.54	3.95	*	Palin focuses on work and jobs
Achievement	Try, succeed	2.03	2.79	*	Palin higher in achievement motives
Leisure	Games, tv	0.20	0.68
Home	Garage, yard	0.53	0.37
Money	Cash, debt	2.18	1.89
Religion	God, church	0.20	0.09
Death	Dead, cemetery	0.39	0.25

The numbers represent the percentage of total words that were spoken by the candidate. So, for example, 2.79% of all the words used by Sarah Palin were associated with achievement (words like try, succeed, win) compared with 2.03% of Biden’s words.  These numbers were generated by the computerized text analysis program LIWC, or Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (www.liwc.net).

James W. Pennebaker