Reading Between the Lines: The Lay Assessment
of Subclinical Depression From Written
Self-Descriptions
Aubrey J. Rodriguez,1 Shannon E. Holleran,2 and
Matthias R. Mehl2
1
University of Southern California
2
University of Arizona
ABSTRACT This study investigated how laypersons assess subclinical
depression in others from 2 forms of written self-descriptions: personal
diaries and online blogs. Fifty-seven target participants wrote essays describing their personality as they would in each context. Naı̈ve judges then
rated targets’ depression from the 2 sets of self-descriptions. The judges
achieved high and comparable levels of accuracy in the 2 self-descriptions
by basing their impressions on linguistic cues indicative of depressionrelated emotional, cognitive, temporal, and social processes. Consistent
with the idea that diaries particularly afford the disclosure of socially
sensitive concerns whereas online blogs particularly afford the disclosure
of socially acceptable concerns, several cues were indicative of depression
only in the targets’ diaries (sadness words, cognitive mechanism words,
metaphysical references) or their online blogs (e.g., swear words, references to sleep). For most of these cues, judges were implicitly aware of
their context-specific diagnosticity.
A wide range of research has demonstrated that snap judgments of
personality made by strangers are often surprisingly accurate (Back,
Schmukle, & Egloff, 2008; Gill, Oberlander, & Austin, 2006; Letzring,
Wells, & Funder, 2006; Rentfrow & Gosling, 2006; Vazire & Gosling,
2004). Yet these studies have also shown that, with respect to their
The data for this study were collected as part of an honors project that the first author
completed at the University of Arizona.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Aubrey J. Rodriguez,
University of Southern California, Department of Psychology, 3620 McClintock Ave,
Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061. E-mail: aubreyro@usc.edu.
Journal of Personality 78:2, April 2010
r 2010, Copyright the Authors
Journal compilation r 2010, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2010.00627.x
576
Rodriguez, Holleran, & Mehl
‘‘judgability,’’ all traits are not equal. Whereas observable traits like
extraversion often jump out right away, private traits such as neuroticism or depression1 usually remain much more hidden ( John & Robins, 1993). In fact, in one recent study, strangers rated how depressed a
group of unacquainted targets were based on a representative sample
of 2 days of their social lives (i.e., more than 100 brief ambient sound
recordings; Mehl, 2006). Despite an abundance of rather personal information about the targets, namely, their naturally occurring social
interactions and activities, the raters were no more accurate than
chance in estimating the targets’ levels of depression. In other words,
their very strong and consensual impressions had no more validity
than a random guess.
Why is depression so difficult to assess in others? And what does it
take to accurately judge depression in others? Answering this question is not only of theoretical value, it is also of high practical importance. Ultimately, people often serve as ‘‘lay clinicians’’ and first
identify depression in others, for example, by pointing out that
someone seems to be not doing well or should seek professional help.
Thus, determining how valid such lay assessments of depression are
and investigating the processes by which they are formed is an important scientific endeavor with potential practical applications.
As suggested above, one reason why depression may be more
difficult to assess than other traits is because of its inherently private
nature. Be it to conform to peer pressure or be it to give off a positive
image, people tend to be reluctant to allow other people insight into
this socially undesirable part of their emotional landscape. This
managing of the public persona on the stage of everyday social
life (Goffman, 1959) naturally acts as a major impediment to the
accurate judgment of a private emotional trait such as depression
(Funder, 1995) and likely accounts for why the judges in Mehl’s
(2006) study did not beat chance at estimating the targets’ levels of
depression despite having access to extensive information about the
targets’ naturally occurring social lives.
Consistent with the highly private nature of depression, most
clinical theories assume that depression is most strongly manifested
in thoughts and feelings about the self (e.g., Beck, 1967). In fact, in
the DSM-IV, six out of nine core symptoms of depression are
1. Throughout the paper, we use the term ‘‘depression’’ to refer to subclinical
depression.
Depression in Written Self-Descriptions
577
cognitive or emotional in nature and thus not directly observable
(e.g., depressed mood, feelings of worthlessness and guilt, thoughts
of death, fatigue) and only three are behavioral in nature and thus
potentially directly observable (e.g., weight loss or gain, insomnia or
hypersomnia, psychomotor agitation or retardation). This suggests
that—in contrast to the public social life—thoughts and feelings
about the self may provide particularly good information to gauge
other people’s levels of depression.
Along similar lines, past research has found that strangers can
judge emotional traits like Neuroticism with high levels of accuracy
on the basis of stream-of-consciousness essays that emulate the natural train of thought—arguably the most direct window into a person’s thoughts and feelings (Holleran & Mehl, 2008). This finding
suggests that, indeed, thoughts and feelings are saturated with emotional and biographical information relevant for the judgment of
private personality traits. The study’s real-world generalizability,
however, is limited given that in the absence of verbally shared
thoughts, people simply do not have access to this kind of information when forming impressions of others. Self-descriptions are another source of private, personality-relevant information about a
person (McAdams, 2007; Pennebaker & Seagal, 1999). Clearly, it is
more common to come across a person’s verbal self-description than
her raw, unedited stream of thoughts.
Two common forms of self-descriptions in which people readily
disclose private information about themselves are personal diaries
and their modern, virtual counterpart: online blogs. Both forms of
self-descriptions foster self-disclosure and therefore provide potentially high-quality information about privately held thoughts and
feelings. In many ways, blogs have surpassed personal diary writing
in popularity and have functionally replaced handwritten diaries
(Cohn, Mehl, & Pennebaker, 2004). However, blogs are increasingly
becoming outlets to disclose personal information that is intended
for, or at least not restricted from, public consumption. By contrast,
personal diaries have remained an arena in which the expressed
thoughts and feelings are truly private and inaccessible to others.
Thus, it is likely that, although both forms of self-descriptions are
saturated with self-relevant information, they capitalize on slightly
different aspects. Specifically, diaries may particularly promote the
disclosure of concerns the author considers socially sensitive and
potentially stigmatizing, whereas blogs may particularly promote the
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Rodriguez, Holleran, & Mehl
disclosure of concerns the author considers acceptable to disclose to
other people. With respect to judgments of depression, then, depressed individuals may be more willing to admit to ‘‘secret symptoms’’ such as preoccupation with existential matters (e.g., religion)
in a diary and to disclose symptoms that are acceptable to their peers
(e.g., somatic complaints) in an online blog.
To the extent that written self-descriptions provide good information for the accurate judgment of subclinical depression, it must
be through the language and words that people use in them. Research on psychological aspects of natural language use has demonstrated that the words people use often serve as linguistic markers of
important social, cognitive, and emotional processes (e.g., Anderson,
Goldin, Kurita, & Gross, 2008; Cohn et al., 2004; Lyons, Mehl,
& Pennebaker, 2006; Pennebaker, Mehl, & Niederhoffer, 2003;
Pressman & Cohen, 2007; Rohrbaugh, Mehl, Shoham, Reilly, &
Ewy, 2008; Simmons, Gordon, & Chambless, 2005). With respect to
depression, prior research has found that depression is related to an
increased use of first-person singular pronouns (Fast & Funder,
2010; Rude, Gortner, & Pennebaker, 2004), presumably a marker of
an increased self-focus (Anderson et al., 2008; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987). Not surprisingly, depression is further related to the use
of more negative and less positive emotion words (Rude et al., 2004).
Subclinical depression is also related to a high use of words that
indicate cognitive processing and meaning-making concerns
(e.g., because, realize, understand; Pennebaker et al., 2003) and
attributions about negative events found in life-narrative stories
(Adler, Kissel, & McAdams, 2006). The frequent use of words that
indicate cognitive processing, particularity on global and stable aspects of events (cf. Kamen & Seligman, 1987), is consistent with
cognitive theories of depression. Finally, depression has been linked
to ‘‘being stuck in the past’’ (Holman & Silver, 1998), which should
be reflected in an elevated use of the past tense in written disclosures.
This is consistent with findings that the experience of time is often
altered in depression such that time is described as empty and standing still, which is related to the use of past tense verbiage (Habermas,
Ott, Schubert, Schneider, & Pate, 2008).
A text analysis program like Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count
(LIWC; Pennebaker, Francis, & Booth, 2001) that provides
computerized counts of words for a set of psychologically relevant
categories can help examine, on the one hand, what linguistic cues,
Depression in Written Self-Descriptions
579
including first-person pronouns, emotion words, cognitive words,
and verb tenses, are related to depression and, on the other hand,
the extent to which these cues are also used when people form impressions of others about their levels of depression. If strangers
manage to make accurate judgments of depression based on written
self-descriptions, they must—implicitly or explicitly—recognize
what kind of word use ‘‘goes with’’ depression (cf. Mehl, Gosling,
& Pennebaker, 2006).
Overview of the Study and Research Questions
The purpose of this study was to examine how laypersons assess
subclinical depression from two common forms of written selfdescriptions: traditional personal diaries and their modern counterpart, online blogs. Specifically, we pursued two research questions.
Question 1: How accurate are lay assessments of depression from
written self-descriptions? As depression is most directly manifested in
thoughts and feelings about the self and as personal diaries and online blogs are naturally saturated with information about such
self-relevant thoughts and feelings, we expect that both forms of
self-descriptions will facilitate accurate lay assessments of depression. We predict that judges will achieve significant and substantial
levels of accuracy in both conditions, similar to the levels documented by prior research using written stream-of-consciousness
essays (Holleran & Mehl, 2008).
Question 2: How is depression assessed from written selfdescriptions? What are the valid cues to depression and what cues do
laypersons use to assess depression? If levels of depression can be
accurately gauged from written self-descriptions, this implies that
they must contain reliable cues for depression. As indicated above,
the words people naturally use in their self-descriptions are arguably
the best candidate for being such cues. We can then ask two
questions: (a) How is depression manifested in the targets’ word
use in the self-descriptions? (b) How do judges use information
about the targets’ word use to form their impressions of the target’s
levels of depression? Brunswik’s (1956) lens model provides a framework to examine the relationship between linguistic cues in the
self-descriptions, judges’ perceptions of depression, and targets’
actual levels of depression. In lens model terms, cue utilization refers to the correspondence between the observable cue (e.g., use of
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Rodriguez, Holleran, & Mehl
sadness words) and judges’ perceptions of the targets’ standing
on the trait or construct (i.e., perceived depression). Cue validity refers to the correspondence between observable cues (e.g., use of sadness words) and targets’ actual position on the given trait or
construct (e.g., self-reported depressive symptoms). According to
the lens model, accuracy (or functional achievement) results when
judges correctly utilize valid cues and ignore invalid cues to the targets’ depression.
Our cue analysis will focus on linguistic indicators of emotional,
cognitive, social, and temporal processes as captured by LIWC
(cf. Anderson et al., 2008; Cohn, Mehl, & Pennebacker, 2004; Lyons
et al., 2006). On the basis of prior research, we predict that targets’
use of more negative emotion words, less positive emotion words,
more cognitive mechanism words, more first-person singular
pronouns, and more past tense verbs will be related to higher
levels of depression. Given the high degree of self-disclosure in
both personal diaries and online blogs, we expect these relationships
to be comparable across the two forms of self-descriptions. However, as described above, given their more private nature, we expect
diaries to afford more readily the disclosure of socially sensitive,
depression-related concerns. Similarly, given their more public
nature, we expect online blogs to afford more readily the disclosure
of socially acceptable, depression-related concerns. Consistent with
this idea, we predict that references to metaphysical issues (i.e., religion, death) would be more indicative of depression in diaries than
in online blogs, and references to somatic complaints (i.e., fatigue)
would be more indicative of depression in online blogs than in
diaries.
Consistent with the expected high levels of accuracy for both selfdescriptions, we predict that judges will have a good intuitive grasp
of what emotional, cognitive, social, and temporal cues are and are
not indicative of depression (cf. Mehl et al., 2006). Thus, we predict
that judges’ cue utilization will map well onto the linguistic indicators of depression in the targets’ self-descriptions (or, in Brunswik’s
terms, that there will be a high correspondence between cue utilization and cue validity). Given the lack of prior research on the issue,
though, we made no specific predictions about the extent to which
judges would be intuitively aware of the degree to which the context
can potentially render certain cues more diagnostic in one selfdescription than in the other.
Depression in Written Self-Descriptions
581
METHOD
We addressed the two research questions in a study comprised of three
phases of data collection. In Phase 1, target participants wrote two essays
describing their personality as they would in a personal diary and an online blog. In Phase 2, two groups of naı̈ve judges read these essays and
rated targets’ levels of depression. In Phase 3, the self-descriptions were
content analyzed for the linguistic cues.
Participants
Fifty-seven target participants (introductory psychology students; 49
women; mean age 18.7 years, SD 5 1.7 years) participated in the study
for course credit. A team of eight research assistants (psychology majors;
6 women) served as naı̈ve judges. The judges had no prior contact with the
data and did not know any of the targets.
Procedure
Each target participant completed two 12-min computer-based writing
assignments. In the two assignments participants described their personality as they would in (a) a personal diary and (b) an online blog. The
verbatim instructions were ‘‘Who are you? Describe yourself as if
you were writing about yourself in a personal diary [in an online blog].
How would you describe your personality to yourself [to others]? Don’t
plan out carefully what you are going to write about; just write your
thoughts as they naturally come to mind. Don’t worry about spelling or
grammar. Just write as freely and unrestrained as possible. Again, write
about who you are as if you were describing your personality to yourself
[to others] in a personal diary [an online blog].’’ The essay order was
counterbalanced.
Assessment of Targets’ Depression
Targets’ level of depression was assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck, Ward, & Mendelson, 1961), which they completed as
part of a larger questionnaire battery. The BDI is a 21-item screening
instrument to evaluate the presence and severity of depressive symptoms.
BDI scores for the sample ranged from 0 to 49 (M 5 6.67, SD 5 7.55;
Cronbach’s a 5 .90). According to the guidelines for interpreting BDI
scores (Beck et al., 1961), 11% of the sample evidenced elevated scores.
Three participants were borderline depressed (scores 17–20), two moderately depressed (scores 21–30), and 1 extremely depressed (score 440).
582
Rodriguez, Holleran, & Mehl
Assessment of Perceptions of Depression
Two groups of naı̈ve judges (four judges per team) evaluated each one of
the two sets of essays (i.e., personal diary entries only or public blog
entries only). This strategy prevented recognition of authors based on
idiosyncratic essay features (e.g., content or style). Essays were randomized and the judges were instructed to read each essay and record their
impressions of the target’s level of depression. Specifically, judges completed the single-item measure ‘‘I see the person as someone who is depressed’’ on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7
(strongly agree). In zero-acquaintance paradigms, using a global measure
of perceived depression is preferable over using a standard depression
scale because many symptoms of depression (e.g., weight loss, insomnia,
or hypersomnia) are inaccessible to strangers. A global measure of
perceived depression also corresponds to how the construct is naturally
perceived by laypersons (Mehl, 2006). This measure yielded high interjudge consensus (intraclass correlation coefficient [2,4]) in both the personal diary essays (.87) and online blog essays (.78).
Linguistic Analysis of Writing Samples
To evaluate cue utilization and cue validity within the lens model framework, the targets’ essays were submitted to LIWC (Pennebaker et al.,
2001), a text analysis program that provides computerized word counts
for psychologically based linguistic categories. From the 74 LIWC variables, 18 were selected for their theoretical relevance to assessing depression from self-descriptions (Pennebaker et al., 2003; Rude et al., 2004).
These variables included positive (e.g., happy, joy) and negative (e.g., sad,
worthless) emotion words, cognitive mechanism words (e.g., know, think),
first-person singular pronouns (e.g., I, me), and past tense verbs
(e.g., were, had; see complete list in Table 1), which were aligned with
five psychological processes (emotional, cognitive, temporal, social, and
personal concerns; Cohn et al., 2004; Lyons et al., 2006). Together, these
cues provided information about both the thematic content and the linguistic style of the self-description.
To examine the extent to which participants responded differently to
the two prompts, we compared the LIWC base rates for the two sets of
essays. In the personal diary condition compared to the online blog condition, participants wrote more words (M 5 392 vs. M 5 352, p 5 .01),
used fewer positive emotion words (M 5 5.4% vs. M 5 4.5%, p 5 .01),
more negative emotion words (M 5 2.4% vs. M 5 1.8%, p 5 .01), and
more cognitive mechanism words (M 5 8.6% vs. M 5 6.9%, p 5 .01).
These differences suggest that targets’ self-descriptions were more private
583
Depression in Written Self-Descriptions
Table 1
Lens Model Analysis of Judges’ Lay Assessments of Depression:
Correlations Between the LIWC-Derived Cues and Judges’ Ratings
of Targets’ Depression (Cue Utilization) and the Targets’ Self-Ratings
of Depressive Symptoms (Cue Validity)
Cue Validity (r)
LIWC-Derived
Cues
Emotional processes
Positive emotion
words
Negative
emotion words
Sadness words
Swear words
Cognitive processes
Cognitive
mechanism
words
Causation words
Insight words
Inhibition words
Temporal processes
Past tense verbs
Present tense
verbs
Future tense
verbs
Social processes
Social words
First-person
singular
pronouns
First-person
plural pronouns
Personal concerns
Metaphysical
words
Religion words
Death words
Sleep words
Cue Utilization (r)
Example
Word
Personal
Diary
Online
Blog
Personal
Diary
Online
Blog
happy, joy
.38nn
.26n
.48nn
.37nn
lonely,
worthless
sad, cry
damn, fuck
.21
.05
.35nn
.31n
.60nn
.04
.11
.58nn
.52nn
.10
.34nn
.49nn
know, cause
.51nn
.00
.34nn
.01
because, why
think, realize
avoid, forbid
.26n
.38nn
.51nn
.03
.05
.01
.33
.06
.26n
.10
.03
.07
were, did
is, can
.31n
.00
.45nn
.27n
.22
.07
.43nn
.25n
be, will
.09
.18
.15
.21
friend, talk
I, me, my
.05
.15
.10
.10
.03
.29n
.11
.04
we, us, our
.04
.06
.13
.02
faith, moral
.41nn
.12
.05
.06
God, pray
dead, grave
tired, fatigue
.39nn
.21
.12
.07
.20
.36nn
.01
.11
.21
.03
.10
.27n
Note. N 5 57 for targets; N 5 8 for judges. Targets’ depressive symptoms were assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory. Judges rated targets’ depression using a
single item measure. LIWC 5 Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count; the LIWCderived cues are computed as proportions of the total number of words; pairs of cue
validity or cue-utilization correlations in bold are significantly different from each
other (Hotelling’s t test with Williams Modification).
n
p .05; nnp .01.
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Rodriguez, Holleran, & Mehl
(i.e., less influenced by social desirability concerns) and more reflected in
the personal diary than in the online blog condition.
RESULTS
Question 1: How Accurate Were Judges’ Lay Assessments
of Depression From the Two Forms of Written
Self-Descriptions?
To examine the accuracy of judges’ lay assessments of targets’ depression, we correlated the aggregated judge ratings with the targets’
scores on the BDI. Consistent with our prediction that judges would
achieve substantial accuracy in both forms of self-descriptions, accuracy was .49, ( p 5 .01) for the personal diary condition and .57
( p 5 .01) for the online blog condition.2 The difference between the
two accuracy correlations was not statistically significant ( p 5 .20).
The average pairwise agreement among the judges was .65 in the
diary condition and .48 in the blog condition. The agreement between the two groups of judges across both conditions was .59. To
further examine the degree to which judges in the two conditions
picked up on similar or different variance components in the targets’
depression, we conducted a multiple regression predicting targets’
BDI scores simultaneously from both the judges’ ratings in the personal diary condition and the online blog condition. The multiple
correlation for the regression model with both predictors was only
slightly (and not significantly) larger (R 5 .60, po.01) than either of
the two zero-order correlations, indicating that the two groups
of judges largely drew on similar variance components in targets’
depression. Taken together, this suggests that, indeed, written selfdescriptions provide good information for accurate lay assessments
of depression and that the form of the self-description—a traditional
personal diary or a modern online blog—does not make a measurable difference.
2. A Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of the targets’ levels of depression indicated that
the distribution of BDI scores significantly departed from a normal distribution.
Therefore, we corrected targets’ BDI scores using a square-root transformation
and recomputed the accuracy correlations. The analyses yielded comparable
accuracy correlations (r 5 .47 in the personal diary condition and r 5 .49 in the
online blog condition).
Depression in Written Self-Descriptions
585
Question 2: How Was Depression Assessed From the Two Forms of
Written Self-Descriptions? What Were Valid Cues to Depression
and What Cues Did the Judges Use to Assess Depression?
To test how judges formed their impressions of targets’ depression,
we conducted two lens model analyses, one for each set of selfdescriptions. Specifically, for both the personal diary and the online
blog conditions, we correlated the LIWC-derived cues with (a)
the judges’ impressions of targets’ depression (to track statistical
cue utilization) and (b) the targets’ BDI scores (to track statistical
cue validity). These results are presented in Table 1.
Cue Validity in the Personal Diary Versus Online Blog Conditions
Consistent with the idea that depressed people dwell more on the
past than on the present (Holman & Silver, 1998), the use of past
tense verbs was related to depression in both the personal diaries and
the online blogs. Also, consistent with depression being characterized by less positive self-schemas, the use of positive emotion words
was negatively related to depression in both forms of descriptions.
On the other hand, surprisingly, given that social withdrawal is often
considered a core component of depression (Mehl, 2006; Nezlek,
Imbrie, & Shean, 1994), LIWC markers of social processes (e.g., social words, first-person plural pronouns) were unrelated to depression in either self-description. Also, in contrast to prior research
(Fast & Funder, 2010; Rude et al., 2004), in neither self-description
was depression related to an elevated use of first-person singular
pronouns as a linguistic marker of an increased self-focus.
Most importantly, though, several cues emerged as uniquely indicative of depression in only one form of self-description. Contrary
to our predictions anticipating similarity between the self-descriptions for emotional cues, sadness words were markers of depression
only in the personal diaries, and the use of swear words was indicative of depression only in the online blogs. Similarly, the use of
cognitive mechanism words, a linguistic marker of meaning-making
concerns (Pennebaker et al., 2003), was indicative of depression only
in the personal diaries. This effect also held for the following subcategories: causation words, insight words, and discrepancy words.
Consistent with our predictions that personal diaries afford particularly the disclosure of socially sensitive depression-related concerns,
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Rodriguez, Holleran, & Mehl
references to metaphysical issues and religion (e.g., God, pray) were
related to depression only in the personal diary condition. Also,
consistent with our prediction that online blogs afford particularly
the disclosure of socially acceptable, depression-related concerns,
references to sleep (e.g., tired, fatigue) were related to depression
only in the online blogs. In both cases, Hotelling’s t tests (with Williams Modification) indicated that the pairs of correlations were significantly different from each other.
Cue Utilization in the Personal Diary Versus Online Blog Condition
The two cue-utilization columns show that the cues that judges used
to infer depression were largely the same as those that were, in fact,
related to targets’ depression. As a formal measure of the degree of
convergence between cue validity and cue utilization, we calculated
column–vector correlations (cf. Funder & Sneed, 1993). The column–vector correlation between the cue-validity and cue-utilization
correlations was r 5 .75 for the personal diary and r 5 .82 for the
online blog conditions. The strong correlations indicate that in both
conditions judges were good at basing their impressions on the correct (i.e., valid) cues and ignoring invalid ones. This is also consistent
with their high level of accuracy in both sets of self-descriptions.
Interestingly, judges also seemed to have an intuitive grasp of which
cues were exclusively indicative of depression in only one form of
self-description. For example, judges were implicitly aware that expressed sadness and meaning-making concerns (i.e., cognitive mechanism words) were only suggestive of depression in the personal
diaries and that sleep words were only suggestive of depression in the
online blogs. They also uniquely—and by and large correctly—inferred depression in the online blogs from the absence of present and
future tense verbs. However, the lack of a correlation between perceived depression and the use of metaphysical and religion words
suggest that judges failed to pick up on the link between existential
concerns and depression in the personal diaries.
Mediation Analyses in the Personal Diary and Online Blog Condition
To provide further evidence that the linguistic cues accounted for the
judges’ levels of accuracy, we conducted a multiple mediation analysis for each of the two conditions. Multiple mediation allows for a
Depression in Written Self-Descriptions
587
set of potential mediators to be simultaneously tested and is analogous to conducting a regression analysis with a set of predictors
(Preacher & Hayes, 2008). In line with traditional guidelines for
assessing mediation (Baron & Kenny, 1986), we considered LIWC
cues potential mediators if they showed both significant cue validity
and significant cue-utilization correlations. This way, positive emotion words, sadness words, cognitive mechanism words, and inhibition words were included in the multiple mediation analysis for the
personal diary condition and positive emotion words, swear words,
past tense verbs, present tense verbs, and sleep words were included
in the multiple mediation analysis for the the blog condition.
In the personal diary condition, the results indicated that the selected LIWC cues fully mediated the relationship between judges’
ratings of depression and targets’ actual levels of depression. Bootstrapping analyses revealed that the inclusion of the set of mediators
significantly reduced the total effect (by 86%) and rendered the association between judges’ depression ratings and targets’ BDI scores
nonsignificant, b 5 .36, SE 5 0.67, t(57) 5 .52, p 5 .60. In the blog
condition, the results revealed that the selected LIWC cues partially
mediated the relationship between judgments of depression and target depression. Bootstrapping analyses revealed that the inclusion of
the set of mediators significantly reduced the total effect (by 42%),
but the association between judges’ depression ratings and the
targets’ BDI scores remained significant, b 5 2.09, SE 5 0.82,
t(57) 5 2.53, p 5 .01. Follow-up analyses of each of the individual
LIWC cues suggested that the partial mediation was driven by the
targets’ use of swear words in the blog condition.
DISCUSSION
The purpose of this study was to investigate how laypersons assess
subclinical depression in others from written self-descriptions. Consistent with our predictions, judges achieved substantial and comparable levels of accuracy when rating targets’ depression based on
the two forms of written self-descriptions. Also, consistent with our
predictions, judges based their impressions on linguistic cues indicative of depression-related emotional, cognitive, temporal, and social processes. Finally, consistent with the idea that personal diaries
particularly afford the disclosure of socially sensitive concerns
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Rodriguez, Holleran, & Mehl
whereas online blogs particularly afford the disclosure of socially
acceptable concerns, several linguistic cues were indicative of depression only in the targets’ personal diary essays (sadness words,
cognitive mechanism words, metaphysical references) or their online
blog essays (e.g., swear words, references to sleep). Even some of the
cues that we predicted to be generally indicative of depression
emerged as context specific (e.g., use of negative emotion words
and cognitive mechanism words). Interestingly, for most of these
cues, judges intuitively used them according to their context-specific
diagnosticity.
Private Person Perception Contexts and the Accuracy of Lay
Assessments of Depression
Past research has found that depression and other private traits are
difficult to judge accurately. Presumably, this is because these traits
are less likely to be manifested in contexts that are easily observed by
other people ( John & Robins, 1993). With the specific purpose of
maximizing the availability of private self-relevant information, we
chose to examine a person perception context that provides outsiders
with a window into a person’s thoughts and feelings: written
self-descriptions. Our findings are particularly compelling because,
unlike prior research on judging depression from (acoustic) information about a person’s naturally occurring social life (Mehl, 2006),
these findings demonstrate levels of judgmental accuracy that are
similar to the accuracy obtained when judges have the opportunity
to directly ‘‘read’’ a people’s momentary thoughts in form of their
stream-of-consciousness essays (Holleran & Mehl, 2008). Across two
common forms of written self-descriptions, personal diaries and online blogs, we found evidence that self-descriptions are person perception contexts that can facilitate accurate assessments of a private
trait such as depression. On a theoretical level, our findings are consistent with the Realistic Accuracy Model’s (Funder, 1995) postulate
that specific contexts can be ‘‘diagnostic’’ for specific traits (i.e., that
the accuracy of personality judgments may be subject to Trait
Information interactions).
In the current study, judges achieved a substantial level of accuracy by relying on linguistic cues contained in the targets’ essays that
were indicative of depression. Consistent with prior research on linguistic markers of depression, using more negative emotion words
Depression in Written Self-Descriptions
589
(Rude et al., 2004), more cognitive mechanism words (Pennebaker
et al., 2003), and more past tense (Holman & Silver, 1998) was related to targets’ levels of depression in both the personal diaries and
online blogs. Further, consistent with research on the accuracy of
implicit folk theories of personality (Mehl et al., 2006), judges
had a rather good intuitive grasp of these relationships, as indicated by their use of the correct cues to infer targets’ levels of
depression. Inconsistent with prior research (Rude et al., 2004),
though, depression was not related to using more first-person
singular pronouns. It is possible that the self-focused task
demands (i.e., to describe oneself in the form of a written selfdescription) reduced between-person variability in the use of firstperson singular pronouns and thereby constrained a potential
relationship between depression and self-referencing.
In addition, we found several context-specific cues that judges
used to infer depression differently across the personal diaries and
online blogs. Because of the private nature of personal diaries, we
anticipated that these self-descriptions would be an arena fit for the
discussion of potentially socially sensitive depression-related concerns, such as concerns with metaphysical issues (i.e., life, death, and
faith). By contrast, public self-descriptions in the blog condition
were expected to contain linguistic cues of more socially acceptable
depression-related concerns, including somatic symptoms of depression (i.e., sleep, fatigue). Our results confirmed this pattern: Linguistic cues of metaphysical and religious concerns were valid cues of
depression in the personal diary condition, and sleep words were
valid cues of depression in online blog condition. Not only were
these cues strongly predictive of depression in their respective contexts, they were exclusively predictive in these contexts. Although we
did not predict the context specificity for the validity of sadness
words and swear words to depression, the two findings appear to
follow our overall logic of how personal diaries and online blogs
differ with respect to self-presentational concerns. Among students,
the use of sadness and swear words likely provides two possible ways
to express depression-related negative emotions. Whereas the use of
swear words may be a particularly acceptable way of sharing negative emotions with peers, the expression of sadness may be more
socially stigmatized and therefore more likely confined to private
acts of self-disclosure. The swear words finding is consistent with
work on the psychological importance of swear words (cf. Jay, 2009).
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Rodriguez, Holleran, & Mehl
Montagu (1942) argued that swearing can be a way to release negative impulses in public without being socially ostracized. Consistent
with this idea, using profanity in public might be one way to let
negative emotions breathe and get a chuckle from others while potentially avoiding the negative social implications of being ‘‘outed’’
as depressed. This way, social norms could render the use of sadness
and swear words differentially diagnostic of depression in personal
diaries and online blogs. Future research should directly test this
hypothesis, for example, by contrasting blogs that are deliberately
shared with a broad compared to a narrow audience (e.g., all friends
vs. best friends only).
Another unexpected finding was the context specificity in the cue
validity of cognitive mechanism words and present tense verbs. The
use of cognitive mechanism words was indicative of depression only
in the diary condition and not in the blog condition, and the use of
less present tense was indicative of depression only in the blog condition and not in the diary condition. A potential explanation of
these differences may be that diaries allow for a deeper processing of
information and blogs allow for a more superficial recounting of past
events and feelings (cf. Lyubomirsky, Sousa, & Dickerhoof, 2006).
This difference in level of processing might result from the implied
audience in the blogs and the lack thereof in the personal diaries.
In sum, the differences in cue validity and utilization we found in
this study provide first, although only indirect, evidence that
students may reveal different aspects of their depression in personal
diaries and online blogs (e.g., metaphysical concerns, somatic
complaints). Future research should further explore this idea, for
example, by directly manipulating factors such as level of processing,
the presence or absence of an implied audience, and different selfpresentational concerns. In addition, as our analyses of socially sensitive versus socially acceptable information was limited to word
categories available in LIWC, future research should explore
broader definitions and coding procedures to assess these constructs.
On a methodological level, our study was unique in that it was the
first to use a within-subject design that experimentally manipulated
different forms of self-descriptions and thereby allowed participants’
language use to differ across their two essays (cf. Fast & Funder,
2008; Pennebaker & King, 1999). Theoretically, our findings indicate
that the psychological implications of the words people use to
describe themselves depend to some extent on the communicative
Depression in Written Self-Descriptions
591
context in which the words are used (Biber, 1988). Consequently, it is
important to recognize the potential context specificity of verbal
cues when designing person perception studies. Often, in lens model
studies on everyday personality judgments, comparisons are made
exclusively between participants instead of also within participants
(e.g., Gosling, Ko, Mannarelli, & Morris, 2002; Mehl, 2006; Vazire,
Naumann, Rentfrow, & Gosling, 2008). Our findings provide first
evidence that it can be useful to examine systematic within-person
differences in personality expression and perception.
In this regard, self-descriptions constitute a powerful medium for
studying such within-person person perception effects. Unlike other
contexts of self-expression (e.g., Web sites, bedrooms, offices), selfdescriptions readily lend themselves to experimental manipulation.
By keeping their central content (i.e., self-descriptions of personality)
constant across conditions and by selectively manipulating peripheral features (e.g., private vs. public, high vs. low social desirability),
it becomes possible to directly test the causal influence of theoretical
person perception parameters. One particularly interesting parameter to manipulate in future research might be the quality of the
conveyed information, that is, the ability or potential of such
information to facilitate or hinder accurate personality judgments.
Information quality has been postulated to be an important moderator of the accuracy of personality judgments (Funder, 1995), and
first empirical evidence in support of this idea has recently been
found (Letzring et al., 2006). Yet exactly what constitutes good and
bad person perception information remains largely unknown. We
believe that our combined, experimental within-person and correlational between-person lens model approach has the potential to
uniquely further our understanding of the psychological processes
that are implicated when people form first impressions of others.
Limitations and Future Directions
The current study has several limitations. First, participants’ selfdescriptions were analogs of, not actual, personal diaries and online
blogs. As explained above, we did this first and foremost for the sake
of experimental control to render participants’ personal diary and
online blog essays comparable in all other aspects. Both actual
personal diaries and actual blogs contain information beyond
self-descriptions (e.g., description of daily activities in diaries and
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Rodriguez, Holleran, & Mehl
third-party posts in blogs) that render direct comparisons of
the judges’ accuracy and cues use meaningless. One limitation
of the personal diary condition is that people rarely have access to
a person’s personal diary. Personal diaries are inherently meant to be
private and not read by other people, and there are few circumstances in which there is a real-world parallel to this condition.
Therefore, in this study, the diary condition could, on some level, be
considered a ‘‘control’’ condition to assess accuracy under ‘‘optimal,’’ that is, maximally informed conditions. The online blog condition, on the other hand, does have a clear real-world parallel, and
future research should try to replicate the findings from this study
using actual online blogs and other more private forms of online selfpresentation (e.g., Lyons et al., 2006).
With the increasing popularity of blogs on social networking sites
such as Facebook and MySpace, individuals often make assessments
about the well-being and current affective state of friends. Judgments of
traits made from social networking sites such as Facebook usually result
in a moderate level of accuracy (Gosling, Gaddis, & Vazire, 2008), so it
would be beneficial to test if private traits such as depression can be
judged in these contexts as well. One feature of these sites is the option
for blogs to be private or public, that is, a person can specify the intended audience. We would expect that users who specify their blogs to
be visible only to their close friends will post more personally revealing
information that facilitates accurate judgments of depression than users
who set their blogs to be publically visible for everyone.
Also, in everyday life, lay assessments of depression are often
made by a person’s friends, rather than by strangers. In this respect,
our study is somewhat unnaturalistic because only strangers made
judgments about the targets’ levels of depression. In future research,
it would be interesting to compare the level of accuracy achieved by
close friends and strangers to see if friends have unique insight into
their peers’ inner mood landscape (cf. Vazire & Mehl, 2008).
Another direction for future research is to examine the extent to
which the validity and utilization of cues is gender specific. Previous
research indicates that the social manifestations of depression may
differ by gender, and there are sometimes gender differences in the
personality correlates of word use (Fast & Funder, 2010; Mehl et al.,
2006). It is possible that linguistic markers of depression differ for
men and women and that judges use different language-based cues
when rating depression in men and women. Unfortunately, we were
Depression in Written Self-Descriptions
593
unable to explore such gender differences in our sample because of
the low number of male targets in our study.
Another limitation of the current study is that we cannot rule out
that judges’ impressions were influenced by textual information that
LIWC failed to capture. For example, linguistic cues that derive their
function from the broader, phrase- or sentence-based semantic context (e.g., irony, sarcasm) are not captured by the LIWC’s wordcount approach but may well have influenced the judges’ ratings of
targets’ depression. The fact that in the personal diary condition, the
LIWC cues fully mediated the accuracy effect supports (but still does
not confirm) the idea that judges indeed based their impressions on
textual information that rather closely resembles what LIWC measured (e.g., perceived sadness of the essay and relative number of
sadness words). On the other hand, the fact that, in the online blog
condition, the LIWC cues only partially mediated the accuracy effect
suggests that judges used other textual information that LIWC failed
to capture. It is likely that this information is based on such broader,
phrase- or sentence-based semantic context (e.g., ‘‘I don’t understand the world around me anymore’’).
Interestingly, we found that the partial mediation in the online
blog condition was driven by the use of profanity. It is possible that
when the judges formed their impressions of the targets, swear words
had increased salience compared to other, more subtle linguistic
cues, an idea that is consistent with Jay’s (2009) finding that swear
words have a stigma (‘‘taboo’’) associated with them. Ultimately,
though, it is important to note that a Brunswik lens model analysis
only provides indirect, correlational evidence for cue use and not
direct, causal evidence. Further, it is possible that certain linguistic
cues (i.e., meta-physical references, religious words) are difficult for
judges to use (e.g., easy to miss) because of their naturally low base
rate. Future research could adopt an experimental approach to examine the relationship between language use and lay assessments of
depression, for example, by manipulating the use of selected linguistic cues to determine their causal effect on judgmental accuracy.
Finally, it is not clear how many participants in our study were
clinically depressed. According to the recommended BDI cutoff
scores (Beck et al., 1961), the majority of our sample (89%) was
nondepressed, but at least 3 participants would be categorized as
moderately or severely depressed. However, clinical scientists and
professionals continue to debate the discrete versus continuous
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Rodriguez, Holleran, & Mehl
nature of depression. The prevailing diagnostic model (i.e., the
DSM-IV) conveys the view that depression is a discrete syndrome.
Yet, from a continuous (or dimensional) perspective, the recommended BDI cutoffs represent quantitative rather than qualitative
delineations of symptom severity. In other words, individuals below
a certain (and somewhat arbitrary) critical cutpoint may not merit a
discrete, categorical diagnosis but may still experience distress and
symptomatology similar to individuals above the respective cutpoint
(see Ruscio & Ruscio, 2000). In this respect, the question then becomes whether our findings based on subclinical levels of depression
can be extrapolated to clinically depressed individuals or would be
qualitatively different in such a population.
Apart from how the findings relate to the debate on dimensional
versus categorical models of depression, however, our sample of undergraduate students seems highly appropriate for our research question,
namely, the extent to which students’ personal diaries and online blogs
can betray their levels of subclinical depression. College students are at a
high risk for developing depression (Kessler et al., 2003), and self-descriptions are an important piece of information that peers rely on when
trying to figure out whether someone is depressed. Future research
should test the extent to which our findings are generalizable to populations that include patients with a confirmed diagnosis of clinical depression. Because we did not conduct clinical interviews, we do not
know the extent to which our findings apply to clinical depression. To
the extent that they do generalize to this population, they suggest that
there may be clinical utility in using linguistic cues for detecting and
evaluating depression.
In conclusion, depression has important clinical and social implications. Identifying contexts that allow for accurate judgments
of depression has implications beyond the scope of examining
whether depression can be judged. In fact, this endeavor begins to
answer the question of how depression is accurately judged in
different contexts and when aspects of the context will demand
the use of different judgment processes.
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