Detecting Narcissism From Older Adults' Daily Language Use: A Machine Learning Approach

Narcissism has been associated with poorer quality social connections in late life, yet less is known about how narcissism is associated with older adults' daily social interactions. This study explored the associations between narcissism and older adults' language use throughout the day.

Participants aged 65-89 (N = 281) wore electronically activated recorders which captured ambient sound for 30 s every 7 min across 5-6 days. Participants also completed the Narcissism Personality Inventory-16 scale. We used Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to extract 81 linguistic features from sound snippets and applied a supervised machine learning algorithm (random forest) to evaluate the strength of links between narcissism and each linguistic feature.

The random forest model showed that the top 5 linguistic categories that displayed the strongest associations with narcissism were first-person plural pronouns (e.g., we), words related to achievement (e.g., win, success), to work (e.g., hiring, office), to sex (e.g., erotic, condom), and that signal desired state (e.g., want, need).

Narcissism may be demonstrated in everyday life via word use in conversation. More narcissistic individuals may have poorer quality social connections because their communication conveys an emphasis on self and achievement rather than affiliation or topics of interest to the other party.