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Comment on Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

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Much to my surprise, I soon discovered that the ways people used pronouns in their essays predicted whose health would improve the most. Specifically, those people who benefited the most from writing changed in their pronoun use from one essay to another. Pronouns were reflecting people’s abilities to change perspective.

On my home page the tagline says, "Your perspective guides your thoughts, your choices, your trajectory." I believe your ability to change perspective is one of the keys to life so this idea that you can use pronouns as a signal for one's ability to change perspective is fascinating to me. As Alan Kay was fond of saying at Xerox PARC, "A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points."

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