The Key to Dating Success May Give You Flashbacks to High School English

Gena Kaufman,Glamour magazine

Do you like to eavesdrop on couples in restaurants who are clearly on first dates? I totally do! (And now, I can justify it as research. Thanks Glamour!) Here's an interesting way that listening to a conversation can actually predict whether the couple will be a good one….

When I saw a recent article on NPR claiming that the secret to dating success was in the pronouns, both the love writer and the word lover in me perked right up. Psychologist James Pennebaker closely examines the words people use, and by recording and transcribing conversations, he can actually predict dating results better than the dates themselves.

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The secret, he says, is not in the substantial part of the conversation but in "function words" which are essentially filler words like the, this, though, I, and, an, there and that. Specifically when people use pronouns, prepositions, and articles in similar ways, they were much more likely to end up on a date. If Pennebaker examines a young dating couple, the more similar their language patterns, the more likely they will be dating in another three months. It's not because similar people are attracted to each other, but because when people are genuinely interested in each other, they shift their language automatically.

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Seems like the oral equivalent of mirroring each other's body language to me. Of course, it's hard to catch something as subtle as pronoun usage, but I have always noticed myself talking slightly differently among different friends, unconsciously altering my sentence structure, tone of voice and phrases, depending on whether I'm with my bubbly best friend or my sarcastic coworkers.

Interesting, right? Another tidbit not necessarily relevant to romantic relationships is that you can determine a power dynamic by looking at how many times a person uses the word "I". For instance, in a teacher/student email interaction, a student will likely say "I" many times, because they have the "lower status."

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Am I the only nerd for words who thinks this is cool? Do you notice your language changing when you're into a guy? Do you talk differently among different friends and acquantainces?

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