Our theory wasn’t based only on my experience or the words of Malala, LeBron James, and others. Previous research had indicated that a high usage of first-person-singular pronouns, a phenomenon called I-talk, is a reliable marker of negative emotion. For example, one large study performed in six labs across two countries with close to five thousand participants revealed a robust positive link between I-talk and negative emotion. Another study showed that you can predict future occurrences of depression in people’s medical records by computing the amount of I-talk in their Facebook posts. All
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