The topography of thought

Whether speaking, writing, or thinking, almost everything humans do involves language. But can the semantic structure behind how people express their ideas shed light on their future success? Natural language processing of over 40,000 college application essays finds that students whose writing cove...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:PNAS nexus 2024-05, Vol.3 (5), p.pgae163-pgae163
Main Authors: Berger, Jonah, Toubia, Olivier
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic achievement
Psychological aspects
School prose
Semantics
Social and Political Sciences
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Whether speaking, writing, or thinking, almost everything humans do involves language. But can the semantic structure behind how people express their ideas shed light on their future success? Natural language processing of over 40,000 college application essays finds that students whose writing covers more semantic ground, while moving more slowly (i.e. moving between more semantically similar ideas), end up doing better academically (i.e. have a higher college grade point average). These relationships hold controlling for dozens of other factors (e.g. SAT score, parents' education, and essay content), suggesting that essay topography encodes information that goes beyond family background. Overall, this work sheds light on how language reflects thought, demonstrates that how people express themselves can provide insight into their future success, and provides a systematic, scalable, and objective method for quantifying the topography of thought.
ISSN:2752-6542
2752-6542
DOI:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae163