It seems pretty obvious that people are attracted to and tend to settle down with other people they are similar to. We very often like people with the same interests, values, senses of humor, etc. A new study has found, though, that people are also responding to how another person talks, not which language, but what style of language! Are couples literally speaking a similar language of love and don't know it?
The study published in Psychological Science finds that people who speak in similar styles are more compatible. The study focused on words called “function words.” These aren’t nouns and verbs; they’re the words that show how those words relate. They’re hard to explicitly define, but we use them all the time—words like the, a, be, anything, that, will, and and.
According to the co-author of the study James Pennebaker of the University of Texas at Austin, how we each individually choose to use these words create our own writing and speaking style.
“Function words are highly social and they require social skills to use,” Pennebaker says. Like likes like, a saying goes. Or maybe it's more about feeling like you literally can understand each other better.
A second study revealed the same pattern in everyday online chats between dating couples over the course of 10 days. Almost 80 percent of the couples whose writing style matched were still dating three months later, compared with approximately 54 percent of the couples who didn’t match as well.
Are you wondering whether you and your partner have matching language styles? Visit James Pennebaker’s “In Synch: Language Style Matching” application online to find out!
Read article on Science Daily, HERE.