From "What kind of words do you use?" Obviously hidden reactions of the body to stress

ByPriscilla Du Preez

From the change of the word used by humans, "that there is a possibility that physiological stress can be revealed"Bulletin of the American Academy of SciencesThe results of the research published in the report clearly. In the research, by tracking specific words from among randomly collected audio clips, we succeeded in finding changes in gene expression related to stress, and by analyzing the vocalization patterns, stress by the speaker himself We succeeded in predicting physiological changes more accurately than level assessment.

Language Patterns Reveal Body's Hidden Response to Stress - Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/language-patterns-reveal-bodys-hidden-response-to-stress/

A poor living environment, such as poverty, trauma, social isolation, has a tremendous impact on health and has the potential to increase the risk of various chronic diseases, from heart disease to dementia. We tried to elucidate the biological mechanisms of these problems and it was discovered that people experiencing a poor living environment experience extensive changes in gene expression of immune system cells. For example, genes related to inflammation become more active, and antiviral genes are suppressed.

These biological changes are the result of the evolutionary response of the body to threats, says Steve Cole, a geneticist at the University of California, Los Angeles. However, it has not been known how people expressing stress are expressing themselves.

Although stress is caused by "automatic assessment of threats" in the brain, we questioned that it does not necessarily occur unless we reach the conscious awareness. In order to investigate, Mr. Kohl and his colleagues started a survey with teams of Matthias Mail who are psychologists at the University of Arizona who study how stress affects language.

ByMeghan Duthu

In the research, I asked 143 American volunteers to wear an audio recorder. We recorded the conversation contents of the wearer for 2 days with an audio recorder, and saved a total of 22,627 voice data. Mr. Mail transcribes the saved recording data and analyzes the words used.

Humans consciously use nouns and verbs, but researchers say that pronouns and adjectives are "used more automatically and show us a little more clearly about the situation of the speaker" a word. According to Mr. Mr., for example, when facing a personal crisis or after being subjected to a terrorist attack, people are likely to use many pronouns and adjectives.

After that, we compared "words emitted by subjects" and "expression in 50 leukocytes of 50 genes known to be affected by adversity". Then, I discovered that gene expression can be predicted significantly more with reference to frequency of use of pronouns and adjectives than self-declaration that stress, depression, anxiety is felt.

People with stressful expression of the gene tend to have fewer mouths as a whole. However, according to the research, he seems to intensively use adverbs such as "really" and "incredibly", and may use adverbs as an "emotional enhancer". Also, it seems that the frequency of using multiple pronouns indicating "third parties" such as "them" decreases. It is speculated that this is because when you are exposed to the threat yourself will not be conscious of others other than yourself.

ByMorgan Basham

This approach has been suggested to be useful in identifying people at risk for developing stress-related diseases. If you apply this approach, the doctor may need to listen carefully to the patient not only "what to talk about" but "what words did you use?"