The Story of the "I" Chase: Psychological Implications of Self-Referential Language Use

First published: October 19, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12647

Description

This study reviews the psychological consequences of the use of first person singular pronouns ("I-talk").

The general intuition is that I-talk is associated with an overly positive, highly agentic and inflated view of the self, including arrogance, egocentricity and grandiose narcissism.

Early research provided evidence that frequent I-talk is associated with grandiose narcissism, but more recent research has shown that the correlation is nearly zero.

Frequent I-talk is positively correlated with depressive symptoms, neurotic tendencies, and also with a variety of neurotic narcissism called vulnerable narcissism.

In addition, frequent I-talk was positively associated with sociodemographic characteristics such as (low) status, (young) age, and (female) gender, so I-talk had a conditional association with truth-telling and authenticity.

Since this would be a correlation that appears to be context dependent, the content of this review was to summarize the literature on I-talk, provide some speculation about the emerging psychological meaning of I-talk, and provide a guide for future research.