Debate 3: McCain and Obama word usage

 

by James W. Pennebaker

The third and final debate produced language patterns that were remarkably similar to the other two debates.  As before, McCain was slighly more personal and emotional than Obama.  McCain also used more future tense verbs.  Obama used words that suggested he was more cognitively complex with longer words and more complicated sentences. In addition, he tended to use more exclusive words and tentative words (e.g., perhaps, maybe) which can also signal looking at the world from different perspectives.

As discussed in a previous blog, we have also found evidence to suggest that McCain and Obama have different thinking styles.  Whereas McCain tends to be more categorical in his thinking,  Obama is more fluid or contextual in the ways he approaches problems.  Categorical thinking involves the use of concrete nouns and their associated articles (a, an, the) and suggests that the person is approaching a problem by breaking it down into its component parts and attempting to put it in meaningful categories.  Fluid or contextual thinking involves a higher rate of verbs and associated parts of speech (such as gerunds and adverbs).

There were also a few departures in language use by the two candidates compared to their earlier debates.  Obama, for example, used more 1st person singular pronouns than his opponent for the first time in any debate we’ve analyzed.  This may be due, in part, to the fact that McCain only used his “my friends” only once. Obama also used more achievement words than McCain which has typically been a reliably high marker for McCain. 

Using the LIWC computer program, the differences in language usage between the categories in the third debate were as follows:

Category	Examples	McCain	Obama	Interpretation
Word count		6596	7339	Obama talks more
Words per sentence		13.83	18.39	Obama longer sentences
Big words (over 6 letters)		17.77	18.72	Obama bigger words
Personal pronouns		10.22	9.22	McCain more personal in general
1st person singular	I, me, my	2.99	3.08
1st person plural	We, our	2.71	3.05
2nd person	You, yours	1.91	1.39	McCain more pointed
3rd person singular	He, she, her	1.33	0.63	McCain more reference to others
3rd person plural	They, them	1.27	1.08
Indefinite pronouns	It, those	6.67	7.67	Obama more vague
Articles	A, the	6.76	6.24	McCain more categorical thinking
Verbs	Walk, went	15.74	16.65	Obama more fluid or contextual
Auxiliary verbs	Is, have	10.29	10.40
Past tense	Was, gave	3.35	2.68	McCain talks about things in the past
Present tense	Am, is	10.01	12.06	Obama more present oriented
Future tense	will	1.39	0.91	McCain more future oriented
Common adverbs	Very, really	4.05	4.39
Prepositions	To, for, of	13.22	13.35
Conjunctions	And, or, whereas	6.55	6.21
Negations	No, not, never	1.52	1.61
Quantifiers	Much, few	2.59	3.08
Numbers	Six, 12	1.65	1.72
Social references	Friend, we, talk	11.75	10.19	McCain more references to others
Overall emotion words	Happy, hurt, kill	5.43	5.01	McCain more emotional
Positive emotions	Happy, nice	3.79	3.61
Negative emotions	Sad, nasty, bad	1.65	1.43
Anxiety, fear	Worry, scared	0.12	0.14
Anger	Angry, hate	0.59	0.31
Sadness	Depressed, cry	0.32	0.27
Cognitive mechanisms	Think, should	17.39	17.89
Insight	Realize, know	1.73	2.04
Causal	Because, reason	1.43	2.13	Obama more causal reasoning
DIscrepancy	Would,could	2.11	2.00
Tentative	Maybe, perhaps	1.52	2.15	Obama perspective difference
Certainty	Absolute, certainly	1.46	1.50
Inhibition	Blocked, stop	0.64	0.60
Inclusive words	With, and	6.78	6.13	McCain over inclusive
Exclusive words	Except, but	2.24	2.47
Relativity	Times, going, over	11.61	12.11
Motion	Went, fly	1.65	2.02
Space	Area, under	5.81	5.78
Time	Hour, clock	3.70	4.05
Content Categories
Work	Job, paycheck	3.99	4.86	Obama more references to work
Achievement	Try, succeed	1.82	2.58	Obama higher in achievement words
Leisure	Games, tv	0.47	0.44
Home	Garage, yard	0.53	0.41
Money	Cash, debt	3.21	3.19
Religion	God, church	0.06	0.08
Death	Dead, cemetery	0.09	0.01