Words without power: Reduced semantic (but not grammatical) agency signals low mood and self-esteem

Agentic language-words and phrases that reflect a speaker's sense of control, intention, or ability to act-has been proposed as a linguistic marker of psychological well-being. Across two preregistered studies (N = 587), we examined whether individuals experiencing lower mood or reduced self-esteem use less agentic language in written utterances. Participants completed validated measures of current and prolonged mood, depressive symptoms, and explicit and implicit self-esteem, followed by a writing task. Agentic language use was assessed through both semantic and grammatical indicators. In both studies, low mood and self-esteem emerged as strong negative predictors of semantic indicators of agency, with prolonged affect and explicit self-liking being the most consistent and robust correlates. Furthermore, semantic indicators reliably distinguished individuals who met the screening threshold for depression from those who did not, with depressed participants using significantly less agentic language. Grammatical indicators of agency, on the other hand, showed weaker and less consistent associations. These findings suggest that semantic-but not grammatical-expressions of agency may serve as subtle behavioural markers of mood and self-related evaluations. Beyond theoretical implications for psycholinguistics and clinical psychology, this work offers potential applications in scalable psychological screening tools, therapeutic language-based interventions, and self-guided mental health technologies.