THE everyday words and phrases which could reveal if your partner is a narcissist have been revealed.
Fresh research has found that we can spot someone’s personality dysfunction from the words they use.
Whether in a quick text message, a long email, a casual chat with a friend, or a comment online, the words people choose quietly reveal deeper patterns in how they think, feel, and relate to others.
Everyone has personality traits – habitual ways of thinking, feeling and behaving.
When these patterns become rigid, intense or disruptive, they can cause ongoing problems with emotions, sense of self and relationships.
At the more severe end are personality disorders, where these patterns create significant distress and impairment.
Common personality disorders include narcissistic, antisocial, and borderline personality disorder.
But not everybody has a full-blown disorder. Personality functioning actually exists on a spectrum.
Many people you meet – at work, when dating, or online – may show milder difficulties, such as mood fluctuations, negativity, rigid thinking or darker traits like manipulation and callousness.
These patterns often slip into how people speak or write long before they show up in more explicit behaviour.
Noticing these patterns can help us learn about and understand others, support those who may be struggling, and navigate our social lives safely – online and offline – with greater awareness.
Across four studies using computational text analysis – three of which were included in the researcher’s PhD findings – it was revealed that personality dysfunction leaves a detectable trace in everyday communication.
In one study of 530 people, published in the Journal of Personality Disorders, the reserchers analysed written essays about peoples’ close relationships and collected data on their levels of personality dysfunction.
Those with greater personality dysfunction used language that carried a sense of urgency and self-focus – “I need…”, “I have to…”, “I am…”.
They also had more negative, particularly angry, emotion terms, such as “furious” and “annoyed”.
At the same time, they used noticeably less intimate or affiliative language such as “we”, “love” and “family”.
In a second project, published in Journal of Affective Disorders Reports, the researchers analysed written essays of 530 people, as well as transcribed conversations from 64 romantic couples which included women with diagnosed personality disorders.
Across both written and spoken communication, those with more dysfunctional or disordered personalities used more negative emotion words – and a wider variety of them.
Turning to online communication, in a study recently published in npj Mental Health Research, an analysis of nearly 67,000 Reddit posts from 992 people who self-identified as having a personality disorder was carried out.
Those who frequently engaged in self-harm used language that was markedly more negative and constricted.
Their posts contained more self-focused language and more negations – such as “can’t”. They also used more sadness and anger terms, and more swearing, while referencing other people less.
Their wording was also more absolutist, reflecting all-or-nothing thinking, favouring words like “always”, “never”, or “completely”.
What is narcissistic personality disorder?
The condition is one of seven types of personality disorders and is named after Narcissus from Greek mythology, who fell in love with his own reflection.
It results in the sufferer being obsessed with the fantasy of unlimited success, power, brilliance and ideal love and beauty and have an inflated sense of their importance coupled with a deep need for excessive attention.
But behind the confidence, sufferers can be extremely vulnerable to slightest criticism and have low self-esteem, the Mayo Clinic reports.
The disorder can also cause problems in many areas of life – including work, relationships and financial affairs.
People with narcissistic personality disorder may be generally unhappy and disappointed when they’re not given the admiration they think they deserve and may find relationships unfulfilling.
