Matthias R Mehl

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Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Mehl, M. R., & Conner, T. S. (2012). Handbook of research methods for studying daily life. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
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  (Eds.)

Chapters

• Demiray, B., Demiray, B., Demiray, B., Luo, M., Luo, M., Luo, M., Tejeda-Padron, A., Tejeda-Padron, A., Tejeda-Padron, A., Mehl, M. R., Mehl, M. R., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). Sounds of healthy aging: Assessing everyday social and cognitive activity from ecologically sampled ambient audio data. In Personality and healthy aging in adulthood(pp 111--132). Springer, Cham.
• Allemand, M., & Mehl, M. R. (2017). Personality assessment in daily life: A roadmap for future personality development research. In Personality Development Across the Lifespan(pp 437--454).
• Mehl, M. R., Bollich, K. L., Doris, J. M., & Vazire, S. (2015). Character and coherence: Testing the stability of naturalistically observed daily moral behavior. In C. Miller, Furr, M.R., Knobel, A., & Fleeson, W. (Eds.), Character: New Directions from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology(pp 630-651). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Ireland, M. E., & Mehl, M. R. (2014). Language use and personality. In Oxford Handbook of Language and Social Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.
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  Holtgraves, T. (Ed.)
• Mehl, M. R. (2013). Conducting psychology research in the real-world. In Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF Publishers.
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  E. Diener & R. Biswas-Diener (Eds)
• Mehl, M. R. (2012). Naturalistic observation sampling: The Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR). In Handbook of research methods for studying daily life. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
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  M. R. Mehl & T. S. Conner (Eds.)
• Mehl, M. R. (2006). Quantitative text analysis. American Psychological Association.
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  ;Full Citation: Mehl, M. R. (2006). Quantitative text analysis. In M. Eid & E. Diener (Eds.), Handbook of multimethod measurement in psychology (pp.141-156). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.;
• Mehl, M. R. (2006). Textanalyse [Text analysis]. Hogrefe.
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  ;Full Citation: Mehl, M. R. (2006). Textanalyse [Text analysis]. In F. Peterman & M. Eid (Hrsg.), Handbuch der Psychologischen Diagnostik. [Handbook of psychologocial assessment] (pp. 196-202). Göttingen: Hogrefe. ;

Journals/Publications

• Haas, M., Mehl, M. R., Ballhausen, N., Zuber, S., Kliegel, M., & Hering, A. (2022). The Sounds of Memory: Extending the Age-Prospective Memory Paradox to Everyday Behavior and Conversations. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B.
• Haas, M., Mehl, M. R., Ballhausen, N., Zuber, S., Kliegel, M., & Hering, A. (2022). The Sounds of Memory: Extending the Age-Prospective Memory Paradox to Everyday Behavior and Conversations. The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences.
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  Around the turn of the millennium, the "age-prospective memory (PM) paradox" challenged the classical assumption that older adults necessarily evidence a marked decline in PM functioning. As previous investigations highlighted ecological validity to be a potential explanation, the present study sought to extend established approaches by using novel real-world assessment technologies to examine PM unobtrusively in everyday-life conversations.
• Berry-Blunt, A. K., Holtzman, N. S., Donnellan, M. B., & Mehl, M. R. (2021). The story of “I” tracking: Psychological implications of self-referential language use. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 15(12), e12647.
• Chau, R. F., Sawyer, W. N., Greenberg, J., Mehl, M. R., & Sbarra, D. A. (2021). Emotional recovery following divorce: Will the real self-compassion please stand up?. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 02654075211047238.
• Chilton, P., Woolverton, C., Glisky, E., Mehl, M., & Grilli, M. (2021). Generativity in Life Review: Discovering Life Lessons and Wisdom in Naturalistic Intergenerational Conversations. Innovation in Aging, 5(Supplement\_1), 978--979.
• Danvers, A. F., Milek, A., Tackman, A. M., Kaplan, D. M., Robbins, M. L., Poslinelli, A., Moseley, S., Raison, C. L., Sbarra, D., & Mehl, M. R. (2021). Is frequent sighing an indicator of dispositional negative emotionality? A multi-sample, multi-measure naturalistic-observation study. Journal of Research in Personality, 90, 104046.
• Ferrario, A., Luo, M., Polsinelli, A. J., Moseley, S. A., Mehl, M. R., Yordanova, K., Martin, M., & Demiray, B. (2021). Predicting Working Memory in Healthy Older Adults Using Real-Life Language and Social Context Information: A Machine Learning Approach (Preprint).
• Goel, R., Pham, A., Nguyen, H., Lindberg, C., Gilligan, B., Mehl, M. R., Heerwagen, J., Kampschroer, K., Sternberg, E. M., Najafi, B., & others, . (2021). Effect of workstation type on the relationship between fatigue, physical activity, stress, and sleep. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 63(3), e103--e110.
• Hebbar, R., Papadopoulos, P., Reyes, R., Danvers, A. F., Polsinelli, A. J., Moseley, S. A., Sbarra, D. A., Mehl, M. R., & Narayanan, S. (2021). Deep multiple instance learning for foreground speech localization in ambient audio from wearable devices. EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing, 2021(1), 1--8.
• Hebbar, R., Papadopoulos, P., Reyes, R., Danvers, A. F., Polsinelli, A. J., Moseley, S. A., Sbarra, D. A., Mehl, M. R., & Narayanan, S. (2021). Deep multiple instance learning for foreground speech localization in ambient audio from wearable devices. EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing, 2021(1), 1-8.
• Hebbar, R., Papadopoulos, P., Reyes, R., Danvers, A. F., Polsinelli, A. J., Moseley, S. A., Sbarra, D. A., Mehl, M. R., & Narayanan, S. (2021). Deep multiple instance learning for foreground speech localization in ambient audio from wearable devices. EURASIP journal on audio, speech, and music processing, 2021(1), 7.
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  Over the recent years, machine learning techniques have been employed to produce state-of-the-art results in several audio related tasks. The success of these approaches has been largely due to access to large amounts of open-source datasets and enhancement of computational resources. However, a shortcoming of these methods is that they often fail to generalize well to tasks from real life scenarios, due to domain mismatch. One such task is foreground speech detection from wearable audio devices. Several interfering factors such as dynamically varying environmental conditions, including background speakers, TV, or radio audio, render foreground speech detection to be a challenging task. Moreover, obtaining precise moment-to-moment annotations of audio streams for analysis and model training is also time-consuming and costly. In this work, we use multiple instance learning (MIL) to facilitate development of such models using annotations available at a lower time-resolution (coarsely labeled). We show how MIL can be applied to localize foreground speech in coarsely labeled audio and show both bag-level and instance-level results. We also study different pooling methods and how they can be adapted to densely distributed events as observed in our application. Finally, we show improvements using speech activity detection embeddings as features for foreground detection.
• Lindberg, C., Baranski, E., Gilligan, B., Fisher, J., Heerwagen, J., Kampschroer, K., Sternberg, E., & Mehl, M. R. (2021). Personality and Workstation Type Predict Task Focus and Happiness in the Workplace.
• Lindberg, C., Baranski, E., Gilligan, B., Fisher, J., Heerwagen, J., Kampschroer, K., Sternberg, E., Mehl, M. R., & others, . (2021). Personality and Workstation Type Predict Task Focus and Happiness in the Workplace.
• Mehl, M. R., & Wrzus, C. (2021). Ecological sampling methods for studying personality in daily life..
• Meier, T., Boyd, R. L., Mehl, M. R., Milek, A., Pennebaker, J. W., Martin, M., Wolf, M., & Horn, A. B. (2021). (Not) Lost in Translation: Psychological Adaptation Occurs During Speech Translation. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 12(1), 131--142.
• Meier, T., Boyd, R. L., Mehl, M. R., Milek, A., Pennebaker, J. W., Martin, M., Wolf, M., & Horn, A. B. (2021). (Not) lost in translation: Psychological adaptation occurs during speech translation. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 12(1), 131-142.
• Meier, T., Milek, A., Mehl, M. R., Nussbeck, F. W., Neysari, M., Bodenmann, G., Martin, M., Zemp, M., & Horn, A. B. (2021). I blame you, I hear you: Couples’ pronoun use in conflict and dyadic coping. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 38(11), 3265--3287.
• Raffaelli, Q., Mills, C., Stefano, N., Mehl, M. R., Chambers, K., Fitzgerald, S. A., Wilcox, R., Christoff, K., Andrews, E. S., Grilli, M. D., & others, . (2021). The think aloud paradigm reveals differences in the content, dynamics and conceptual scope of resting state thought in trait brooding. Scientific reports, 11(1), 1--14.
• Raffaelli, Q., Mills, C., de Stefano, N. A., Mehl, M. R., Chambers, K., Fitzgerald, S. A., Wilcox, R., Christoff, K., Andrews, E. S., Grilli, M. D., O'Connor, M. F., & Andrews-Hanna, J. R. (2021). The think aloud paradigm reveals differences in the content, dynamics and conceptual scope of resting state thought in trait brooding. Scientific reports, 11(1), 19362.
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  Although central to well-being, functional and dysfunctional thoughts arise and unfold over time in ways that remain poorly understood. To shed light on these mechanisms, we adapted a "think aloud" paradigm to quantify the content and dynamics of individuals' thoughts at rest. Across two studies, external raters hand coded the content of each thought and computed dynamic metrics spanning duration, transition probabilities between affective states, and conceptual similarity over time. Study 1 highlighted the paradigm's high ecological validity and revealed a narrowing of conceptual scope following more negative content. Study 2 replicated Study 1's findings and examined individual difference predictors of trait brooding, a maladaptive form of rumination. Across individuals, increased trait brooding was linked to thoughts rated as more negative, past-oriented and self-focused. Longer negative and shorter positive thoughts were also apparent as brooding increased, as well as a tendency to shift away from positive conceptual states, and a stronger narrowing of conceptual scope following negative thoughts. Importantly, content and dynamics explained independent variance, accounting for a third of the variance in brooding. These results uncover a real-time cognitive signature of rumination and highlight the predictive and ecological validity of the think aloud paradigm applied to resting state cognition.
• Vasileva, M., Schilpzand, E. J., Mangelsdorf, S. N., Conroy, R., Barrett, A., Jowett, H., Bressan, S., Babl, F. E., Anderson, V., Mehl, M. R., & others, . (2021). Children’s daily life after potentially traumatic injury: A naturalistic observation study.. Traumatology.
• Wolsiefer, K. J., Mehl, M., Moskowitz, G. B., Cagno, C. K., Zestcott, C. A., Tejeda-Padron, A., & Stone, J. (2021). Investigating the Relationship between Resident Physician Implicit Bias and Language Use during a Clinical Encounter with Hispanic Patients. Health Communication, 1--9.
• Alisic, E., Alisic, E., Alisic, E., Mangelsdorf, S. N., Mangelsdorf, S. N., Mangelsdorf, S. N., Schilpzand, E. J., Schilpzand, E. J., Schilpzand, E. J., Barrett, A., Barrett, A., Barrett, A., Landolt, M. A., Landolt, M. A., Landolt, M. A., Mehl, M. R., Mehl, M. R., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). Can children predict psychological recovery after injury?. Archives of disease in childhood, 105(12), 1200--1202.
• Carey, A. L., Rentscher, K. E., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). Naturalistic observation of social interactions. The Wiley Encyclopedia of Health Psychology, 373-383.
• Danvers, A. F., Danvers, A. F., Danvers, A. F., Wundrack, R., Wundrack, R., Wundrack, R., Mehl, M., Mehl, M., & Mehl, M. (2020). Equilibria in personality states: A conceptual primer for dynamics in personality states. European Journal of Personality, 34(6), 999--1016.
• Danvers, A. F., Sbarra, D. A., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). Understanding Personality through Patterns of Daily Socializing: Applying Recurrence Quantification Analysis to Naturalistically Observed Intensive Longitudinal Social Interaction Data. European Journal of Personality, 34(5), 777-793.
• Kaplan, D. M., Kaplan, D. M., Rentscher, K. E., Rentscher, K. E., Lim, M., Lim, M., Kaplan, D. M., Reyes, R., Reyes, R., Keating, D., Rentscher, K. E., Romero, J., Keating, D., Shah, A., Lim, M., Smith, A. D., Reyes, R., York, K. A., Keating, D., , Milek, A., et al. (2020). Best practices for Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) research: A practical guide to coding and processing EAR data. Behavior Research Methods, 52(4), 1538--1551.
• Kaplan, D. M., Raison, C. L., Cole, S., Pace, T. W., Mehl, M. R., & Kaplan, D. M. (2020). Short-term mindfulness or compassion training has no reliable effect on the psychological experience, biological stress reactivity and observed daily behavior of healthy adults: Implications from a “failed” randomized controlled effectiveness trial. ADVANCING CLINICAL, HEALTH AND CONTEMPLATIVE INTERVENTION SCIENCE THROUGH DAILY LIFE RESEARCH METHODS, 83.
• Kaplan, D. M., Raison, C. L., Cole, S., Pace, T. W., Mehl, M. R., & Kaplan, D. M. (2020). Short-term mindfulness or compassion training has no reliable effect on the psychological experience, biological stress reactivity and observed daily behavior of healthy adults: Implications from a “failed” randomized controlled effectiveness trial. ADVANCING CLINICAL, HEALTH AND CONTEMPLATIVE INTERVENTION SCIENCE THROUGH DAILY LIFE RESEARCH METHODS, 83.
• Kaplan, D. M., Rentscher, K. E., Lim, M., Reyes, R., Keating, D., Romero, J., Shah, A., Smith, A. D., York, K. A., & Milek, A. (2020). Best practices for Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) research: A practical guide to coding and processing EAR data. Behavior research methods, 1-14.
• MacArthur, H. J., Cundiff, J. L., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). Estimating the Prevalence of Gender-Biased Language in Undergraduates’ Everyday Speech. Sex Roles, 82(1), 81-93.
• MacArthur, H. J., MacArthur, H. J., MacArthur, H. J., Cundiff, J. L., Cundiff, J. L., Cundiff, J. L., Mehl, M. R., Mehl, M. R., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). Sex Roles, 82(1), 81--93.
• Mangelsdorf, S. N., Conroy, R., Mehl, M. R., Norton, P. J., & Alisic, E. (2020). Listening to family life after serious pediatric injury: A study of four cases. Family process, 59(3), 1191-1208.
• Mangelsdorf, S. N., Mangelsdorf, S. N., Mangelsdorf, S. N., Conroy, R., Conroy, R., Conroy, R., Mehl, M. R., Mehl, M. R., Mehl, M. R., Norton, P. J., Norton, P. J., Norton, P. J., Alisic, E., Alisic, E., & Alisic, E. (2020). Listening to family life after serious pediatric injury: A study of four cases. Family process, 59(3), 1191--1208.
• Meier, T., Boyd, R. L., Mehl, M. R., Milek, A., Pennebaker, J. W., Martin, M., Wolf, M., & Horn, A. B. (2020). Stereotyping in the digital age: Male language is "ingenious", female language is "beautiful" - and popular. PloS one, 15(12), e0243637.
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  The huge power for social influence of digital media may come with the risk of intensifying common societal biases, such as gender and age stereotypes. Speaker's gender and age also behaviorally manifest in language use, and language may be a powerful tool to shape impact. The present study took the example of TED, a highly successful knowledge dissemination platform, to study online influence. Our goal was to investigate how gender- and age-linked language styles-beyond chronological age and identified gender-link to talk impact and whether this reflects gender and age stereotypes. In a pre-registered study, we collected transcripts of TED Talks along with their impact measures, i.e., views and ratios of positive and negative talk ratings, from the TED website. We scored TED Speakers' (N = 1,095) language with gender- and age-morphed language metrics to obtain measures of female versus male, and younger versus more senior language styles. Contrary to our expectations and to the literature on gender stereotypes, more female language was linked to higher impact in terms of quantity, i.e., more talk views, and this was particularly the case among talks with a lot of views. Regarding quality of impact, language signatures of gender and age predicted different types of positive and negative ratings above and beyond main effects of speaker's gender and age. The differences in ratings seem to reflect common stereotype contents of warmth (e.g., "beautiful" for female, "courageous" for female and senior language) versus competence (e.g., "ingenious", "informative" for male language). The results shed light on how verbal behavior may contribute to stereotypical evaluations. They also illuminate how, within new digital social contexts, female language might be uniquely rewarded and, thereby, an underappreciated but highly effective tool for social influence. WC = 286 (max. 300 words).
• Meier, T., Boyd, R. L., Mehl, M. R., Milek, A., Pennebaker, J. W., Martin, M., Wolf, M., & Horn, A. B. (2020). Stereotyping in the digital age: Male language is “ingenious”, female language is “beautiful”–and popular. PloS one, 15(12), e0243637.
• Milek, A., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). ?` Hablan las mujeres m\'as que los hombres?. Mente y cerebro, 26--27.
• Milek, A., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). ¿ Hablan las mujeres más que los hombres?. Mente y cerebro, 26-27.
• O'Hara, K. L., Grinberg, A. M., Tackman, A. M., Mehl, M. R., & Sbarra, D. A. (2020). Contact with an Ex-partner is Associated with Psychological Distress after Marital Separation. Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 8(3), 450-463.
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  This study examined the association between naturalistically-observed in-person contact with one's ex-partner and separation-related psychological distress (SRPD). 122 recently-separated adults were assessed using the Electronically Activated Recorder (Mehl, 2017) on three occasions across five months. The association between in-person contact with one's ex-partner, as a between-person variable, and concurrent SRPD was not reliably different from zero, nor was the time-varying effect of in-person contact. However, more frequent in-person contact with one's ex-partner predicted higher SRPD two months later, above and beyond the variance accounted for by concurrent in-person contact, demographic, relationship, and attachment factors. Follow-up analyses yielded that this effect was only present for people without children; a one standard deviation increase in in-person contact offset and slowed the predicted decline in SRPD over two months by 112%. Our discussion emphasizes new ways to think about the role of in-person contact in shaping adults' psychological adjustment to separation over time.
• O’Hara, K. L., Grinberg, A. M., Tackman, A. M., Mehl, M. R., & Sbarra, D. A. (2020). Contact with an ex-partner is associated with psychological distress after marital separation. Clinical Psychological Science, 8(3), 450-463.
• O’Hara, K. L., Grinberg, A. M., Tackman, A. M., Mehl, M. R., & Sbarra, D. A. (2020). Contact with an ex-partner is associated with psychological distress after marital separation. Clinical Psychological Science, 8(3), 450--463.
• Polsinelli, A. J., Moseley, S. A., Grilli, M. D., Glisky, E. L., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). Natural, Everyday Language Use Provides a Window Into the Integrity of Older Adults' Executive Functioning. The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences, 75(9), e215-e220.
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  Language markers derived from structured clinical interviews and assessments have been found to predict age-related normal and pathological cognitive functioning. An important question, then, is the degree to which the language that people use in their natural daily interactions, rather than their language elicited within and specifically for clinical assessment, carries information about key cognitive functions associated with age-related decline. In an observational study, we investigated how variability in executive functioning (EF) manifests in patterns of daily word use.
• Polsinelli, A. J., Moseley, S. A., Grilli, M. D., Glisky, E. L., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). Natural, Everyday Language Use Provides a Window into the Integrity of Older Adults’ Executive Functioning. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B.
• Polsinelli, A. J., Moseley, S. A., Grilli, M. D., Glisky, E. L., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). Natural, Everyday Language Use Provides a Window into the Integrity of Older Adults’ Executive Functioning. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B.
• Polsinelli, A. J., Polsinelli, A. J., Polsinelli, A. J., Moseley, S. A., Moseley, S. A., Moseley, S. A., Grilli, M. D., Grilli, M. D., Grilli, M. D., Glisky, E. L., Glisky, E. L., Glisky, E. L., Mehl, M. R., Mehl, M. R., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). The Journals of Gerontology: Series B.
• Polsinelli, A. J., Rentscher, K. E., Glisky, E. L., Moseley, S. A., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). Interpersonal focus in the emotional autobiographical memories of older and younger adults. GeroPsych.
• Polsinelli, A., Moseley, S., Grilli, M., Glisky, E., & Mehl, M. (2020). Natural, Everyday Language Use Provides a Window into the Integrity of Older Adults’ Cognitive Functioning. Innovation in Aging, 4(Suppl 1), 623.
• Rauthmann, J. F., Danvers, A. F., Sbarra, D. A., Mehl, M. R., & Rauthmann, J. (2020). Understanding Personality through Patterns of Daily Socializing: Applying Recurrence Quantification Analysis to Naturalistically Observed Intensive Longitudinal Social Interaction Data. European Journal of Personality, 34(5), 777--793.
• Razjouyan, J., Lee, H., Gilligan, B., Lindberg, C., Nguyen, H., Canada, K., Burton, A., Sharafkhaneh, A., Srinivasan, K., & Currim, F. (2020). Wellbuilt for wellbeing: Controlling relative humidity in the workplace matters for our health. Indoor air, 30(1), 167-179.
• Razjouyan, J., Razjouyan, J., Razjouyan, J., Lee, H., Lee, H., Lee, H., Gilligan, B., Gilligan, B., Gilligan, B., Lindberg, C., Lindberg, C., Lindberg, C., Nguyen, H., Nguyen, H., Nguyen, H., Canada, K., Canada, K., Canada, K., Burton, A., , Burton, A., et al. (2020). Wellbuilt for wellbeing: Controlling relative humidity in the workplace matters for our health. Indoor air, 30(1), 167--179.
• Tackman, A. M., Baranski, E. N., Danvers, A. F., Sbarra, D. A., Raison, C. L., Moseley, S. A., Polsinelli, A. J., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). ‘Personality in Its Natural Habitat’ Revisited: A Pooled, Multi‐sample Examination of the Relationships Between the Big Five Personality Traits and Daily Behaviour and Language Use. European Journal of Personality.
• Wank, A. A., Mehl, M. R., Andrews-Hanna, J. R., Polsinelli, A. J., Moseley, S., Glisky, E. L., & Grilli, M. D. (2020). Eavesdropping on Autobiographical Memory: A Naturalistic Observation Study of Older Adults' Memory Sharing in Daily Conversations. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 14, 238.
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  The retrieval of autobiographical memories is an integral part of everyday social interactions. Prior laboratory research has revealed that older age is associated with a reduction in the retrieval of autobiographical episodic memories, and the ability to elaborate these memories with episodic details. However, how age-related reductions in episodic specificity unfold in everyday social contexts remains largely unknown. Also, constraints of the laboratory-based approach have limited our understanding of how autobiographical semantic memory is linked to older age. To address these gaps in knowledge, we used a smartphone application known as the Electronically Activated Recorder, or "EAR," to unobtrusively capture real-world conversations over 4 days. In a sample of 102 cognitively normal older adults, we extracted instances where memories and future thoughts were shared by the participants, and we scored the shared episodic memories and future thoughts for their make-up of episodic and semantic detail. We found that older age was associated with a reduction in real-world sharing of autobiographical episodic and semantic memories. We also found that older age was linked to less episodically and semantically detailed descriptions of autobiographical episodic memories. Frequency and level of detail of shared future thoughts yielded weaker relationships with age, which may be related to the low frequency of future thoughts in general. Similar to laboratory research, there was no correlation between autobiographical episodic detail sharing and a standard episodic memory test. However, in contrast to laboratory studies, episodic detail production while sharing autobiographical episodic memories was weakly related to episodic detail production while describing future events, unrelated to working memory, and not different between men and women. Overall, our findings provide novel evidence of how older age relates to episodic specificity when autobiographical memories are assessed unobtrusively and objectively "in the wild."
• Wank, A. A., Mehl, M. R., Andrews-Hanna, J. R., Polsinelli, A. J., Moseley, S., Glisky, E., & Grilli, M. D. (2020). Eavesdropping on Autobiographical Memory: A Naturalistic Observation Study of Older Adults' Memory Sharing in Daily Conversations. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 14, 238.
• Wrzus, C., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). 20 Ecological Sampling Methods for Studying Everyday Situations. The Oxford Handbook of Psychological Situations, 312.
• Wrzus, C., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). 20 Ecological Sampling Methods for Studying Everyday Situations. The Oxford handbook of psychological situations, 312.
• Wundrack, R., & Mehl, M. R. (2020). El sonido de la personalidad. Mente y cerebro, 10-15.
• Borelli, J. L., Sbarra, D. A., & Mehl, M. (2019). Convergence of naïve coders and participant report ratings of attachment to a former partner: When we should be me. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(3), 977-999.
• Bourassa, K. J., Tackman, A. M., Mehl, M. R., Sbarra, D. A., Donnellan, B., & Schlegel, R. (2019). Psychological overinvolvement, emotional distress, and daily affect following marital dissolution. Collabra: Psychology, 5(1).
• Bourassa, K. J., Tackman, A., Mehl, M. R., & Sbarra, D. A. (2019). Psychological overinvolvement, emotional distress, and daily affect following marital dissolution. Collabra: Psychology, 5(1). doi:https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.184
• Holtzman, N. S., Tackman, A. M., Carey, A. L., Brucks, M. S., Küfner, A. C., Deters, F. G., Back, M. D., Donnellan, M. B., Pennebaker, J. W., & Sherman, R. A. (2019). Linguistic markers of grandiose narcissism: A LIWC analysis of 15 samples. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 38(5-6), 773-786.
• Mangelsdorf, S. N., Conroy, R., Mehl, M. R., & Alisic, E. (2019). Clinicians’ perspectives on innovative naturalistic observations of families in therapy.
• Mangelsdorf, S. N., Mehl, M. R., Qiu, J., & Alisic, E. (2019). How Do Mothers and Fathers Interact With Their Children After An Injury? Exploring the Role of Parental Acute Stress, Optimism, and Self-Efficacy. Journal of pediatric psychology, 44(3), 311-322.
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  In the aftermath of a child injury, children and parents can jointly experience acute stress symptoms. Optimism and self-efficacy might buffer against post-traumatic stress disorder. Knowing that children are innately receptive to parent modeling, we were interested in exploring how parent acute stress, optimism, and self-efficacy might transpire in parent-child interactions and whether any differences existed between mothers and fathers.
• Mangelsdorf, S. N., Mehl, M. R., Qiu, J., & Alisic, E. (2019). How do mothers and fathers interact with their children after an injury? Exploring the role of parental acute stress, optimism, and self-efficacy. Journal of pediatric psychology, 44(3), 311-322.
• Ryan, L., Hay, M., Huentelman, M. J., Duarte, A., Rundek, T., Levin, B., Soldan, A., Pettigrew, C., Mehl, M. R., & Barnes, C. A. (2019). Precision Aging: Applying Precision Medicine to the Field of Cognitive Aging. Frontiers in aging neuroscience, 11, 128.
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  The current "one size fits all" approach to our cognitive aging population is not adequate to close the gap between cognitive health span and lifespan. In this review article, we present a novel model for understanding, preventing, and treating age-related cognitive impairment (ARCI) based on concepts borrowed from precision medicine. We will discuss how multiple risk factors can be classified into because of their interrelatedness in real life, the that increase sensitivity to, or ameliorate, risk for ARCI, and the or common mechanisms mediating brain aging. Rather than providing a definitive model of risk for ARCI and cognitive decline, the Precision Aging model is meant as a starting point to guide future research. To that end, after briefly discussing key risk categories, genetic risks, and brain drivers, we conclude with a discussion of steps that must be taken to move the field forward.
• Ryan, L., Hay, M., Huentelman, M. J., Duarte, A., Rundek, T., Levin, B., Soldan, A., Pettigrew, C., Mehl, M. R., & Barnes, C. A. (2019). Precision aging: applying precision medicine to the field of cognitive aging. Frontiers in aging neuroscience, 11, 128.
• Sbarra, D. A., Cook, C. C., Hasselmo, K., Noon, M. S., & Mehl, M. R. (2019). DNA Methylation Across the Serotonin Transporter Gene Following Marital Separation: A Pilot Study. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 53(12), 1081-1087.
• Sbarra, D. A., Cook, C. C., Hasselmo, K., Noon, M. S., & Mehl, M. R. (2019). DNA Methylation Across the Serotonin Transporter Gene Following Marital Separation: A Pilot Study. Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, 53(12), 1081-1087.
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  Marital separation and divorce are stressful life transitions associated with increased risk for a range of poor mental and physical health outcomes. A key task for research in this area is to identify individual differences that may index risk for these adverse outcomes.
• Tackman, A. M., Sbarra, D. A., Carey, A. L., Donnellan, M. B., Horn, A. B., Holtzman, N. S., Edwards, T. S., Pennebaker, J. W., & Mehl, M. R. (2019). Depression, negative emotionality, and self-referential language: A multi-lab, multi-measure, and multi-language-task research synthesis. Journal of personality and social psychology, 116(5), 817-834.
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  Depressive symptomatology is manifested in greater first-person singular pronoun use (i.e., I-talk), but when and for whom this effect is most apparent, and the extent to which it is specific to depression or part of a broader association between negative emotionality and I-talk, remains unclear. Using pooled data from N = 4,754 participants from 6 labs across 2 countries, we examined, in a preregistered analysis, how the depression-I-talk effect varied by (a) first-person singular pronoun type (i.e., subjective, objective, and possessive), (b) the communication context in which language was generated (i.e., personal, momentary thought, identity-related, and impersonal), and (c) gender. Overall, there was a small but reliable positive correlation between depression and I-talk (r = .10, 95% CI [.07, .13]). The effect was present for all first-person singular pronouns except the possessive type, in all communication contexts except the impersonal one, and for both females and males with little evidence of gender differences. Importantly, a similar pattern of results emerged for negative emotionality. Further, the depression-I-talk effect was substantially reduced when controlled for negative emotionality but this was not the case when the negative emotionality-I-talk effect was controlled for depression. These results suggest that the robust empirical link between depression and I-talk largely reflects a broader association between negative emotionality and I-talk. Self-referential language using first-person singular pronouns may therefore be better construed as a linguistic marker of general distress proneness or negative emotionality rather than as a specific marker of depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
• Tackman, A. M., Sbarra, D. A., Carey, A. L., Donnellan, M. B., Horn, A. B., Holtzman, N. S., Edwards, T. S., Pennebaker, J. W., & Mehl, M. R. (2019). Depression, negative emotionality, and self-referential language: A multi-lab, multi-measure, and multi-language-task research synthesis.. Journal of personality and social psychology, 116(5), 817.
• Borelli, J. L., Pedroza, M., Gaskin, G. E., Smiley, P. A., Kernick, C. A., Brachman, A., & Mehl, M. R. (2018). School-Aged Children's Cognitive Interdependence as a Prospective Link Between Their Depressive Symptoms and Physiological Stress Reactivity. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 37(5), 325-355.
• Collins, G., Poleski, J., Mehl, M., Tackman, A., Reyes, R., Kraft, A., Russo, J., Kenny, D., Bryan, P., & Simons, E. (2018). Building a Cognitive Profile with a Non-Intrusive Sensor: How Speech and Sounds Map onto our Cognitive Worlds.
• Demiray, B., Mehl, M. R., & Martin, M. (2018). Conversational Time Travel: Evidence of a Retrospective Bias in Real Life Conversations. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 2160.
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  We examined mental time travel reflected onto individuals' utterances in real-life conversations using a naturalistic observation method: Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR, a portable audio recorder that periodically and unobtrusively records snippets of ambient sounds and speech). We introduced the term and examined, for the first time, how much individuals talked about their personal past versus personal future in real life. Study 1 included 9,010 sound files collected from 51 American adults who carried the EAR over 1 weekend and were recorded every 9 min for 50 s. Study 2 included 23,103 sound files from 33 young and 48 healthy older adults from Switzerland who carried the EAR for 4 days (2 weekdays and 1 weekend, counterbalanced). 30-s recordings occurred randomly throughout the day. We developed a new coding scheme for conversational time travel: We listened to all sound files and coded each file for whether the participant was talking or not. Those sound files that included participant speech were also coded in terms of their temporal focus (e.g., past, future, present, time-independent) and autobiographical nature (i.e., about the self, about others). We, first, validated our coding scheme using the text analysis tool, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Next, we compared the percentages of past- and future-oriented utterances about the self (to tap onto conversational time travel). Results were consistent across all samples and showed that participants talked about their personal past two to three times as much as their personal future (i.e., retrospective bias). This is in contrast to research showing a prospective bias in thinking behavior, based on self-report and experience-sampling methods. Findings are discussed in relation to the social functions of recalling the personal past (e.g., sharing memories to bond with others, to update each other, to teach, to give advice) and to the directive functions of future-oriented thought (e.g., planning, decision making, goal setting that are more likely to happen privately in the mind). In sum, the retrospective bias in conversational time travel seems to be a functional and universal phenomenon across persons and across real-life situations.
• Demiray, B., Mehl, M. R., & Martin, M. (2018). Conversational time travel: Evidence of a retrospective bias in real life conversations. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2160.
• Ghahramani, A., Pantelic, J., Lindberg, C., Mehl, M., Srinivasan, K., Gilligan, B., & Arens, E. (2018). Learning occupants’ workplace interactions from wearable and stationary ambient sensing systems. Applied energy, 230, 42-51.
• Hasselmo, K., Mehl, M. R., Tackman, A. M., Carey, A. L., Wertheimer, A. M., Stowe, R. P., & Sbarra, D. A. (2018). Objectively Measured Social Integration Is Associated With an Immune Risk Phenotype Following Marital Separation. Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
• Hasselmo, K., Mehl, M. R., Tackman, A. M., Carey, A. L., Wertheimer, A. M., Stowe, R. P., & Sbarra, D. A. (2018). Objectively Measured Social Integration Is Associated With an Immune Risk Phenotype Following Marital Separation. Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, 52(2), 130-145.
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  Close relationships play an integral role in human development, and robust evidence links marital separation and divorce to poor health outcomes. Social integration may play a key role in this association. In many ways, the study of marital separation and divorce provides an ideal model system for a more complete understanding of the association between life stress and physical health.
• Hasselmo, K., Mehl, M. R., Tackman, A. M., Carey, A. L., Wertheimer, A. M., Stowe, R. P., & Sbarra, D. A. (2018). Objectively measured social integration is associated with an immune risk phenotype following marital separation. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 52(2), 130-145.
• Kaplan, D. M., Raison, C. L., Milek, A., Tackman, A. M., Pace, T. W., & Mehl, M. R. (2018). Dispositional mindfulness in daily life: A naturalistic observation study. PloS one, 13(11), e0206029.
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  Mindfulness has seen an extraordinary rise as a scientific construct, yet surprisingly little is known about how it manifests behaviorally in daily life. The present study identifies assumptions regarding how mindfulness relates to behavior and contrasts them against actual behavioral manifestations of trait mindfulness in daily life. Study 1 (N = 427) shows that mindfulness is assumed to relate to emotional positivity, quality social interactions, prosocial orientation and attention to sensory perceptions. In Study 2, 185 participants completed a gold-standard, self-reported mindfulness measure (the FFMQ) and underwent naturalistic observation sampling to assess their daily behaviors. Trait mindfulness was robustly related to a heightened perceptual focus in conversations. However, it was not related to behavioral and speech markers of emotional positivity, quality social interactions, or prosocial orientation. These findings suggest that the subjective and self-reported experience of being mindful in daily life is expressed primarily through sharpened perceptual attention, rather than through other behavioral or social differences. This highlights the need for ecological models of how dispositional mindfulness "works" in daily life, and raises questions about the measurement of mindfulness.
• Kaplan, D. M., Raison, C. L., Milek, A., Tackman, A. M., Pace, T., & Mehl, M. R. (2018). Dispositional mindfulness in daily life: A naturalistic observation study. PLoS ONE, 13(11), e0206029.
• Kleim, B., Horn, A. B., Kraehenmann, R., Mehl, M. R., & Ehlers, A. (2018). Early Linguistic Markers of Trauma-Specific Processing Predict Post-trauma Adjustment. Frontiers in psychiatry, 9, 645.
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  Identifying early predictors for psychiatric disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is crucial for effective treatment and prevention efforts. Obtaining such predictors is challenging and methodologically limited, for example by individuals' distress, arousal, and reduced introspective ability. We investigated the predictive power of language-based, implicit markers of psychological processes ( = 163) derived from computerized text-analysis of trauma and control narratives provided within 18 days post-trauma. Trauma narratives with fewer cognitive processing words (indicating less cognitive elaboration), more death-related words (indicating perceived threat to life), and more first-person singular pronouns (indicating self-immersed processing) predicted greater PTSD symptoms at 6 months. These effects were specific to trauma narratives and held after controlling for early PTSD symptom severity and verbal intelligence. When self-report questionnaires of related processes were considered together with the trauma narrative linguistic predictors, use of more first-person singular pronouns remained a significant predictor alongside self-reported mental defeat. Language-based processing markers may complement questionnaire measures in early forecasting of post-trauma adjustment.
• Kleim, B., Horn, A. B., Kraehenmann, R., Mehl, M. R., & Ehlers, A. (2018). Early linguistic markers of trauma-specific processing predict post-trauma adjustment. Frontiers in psychiatry, 9, 645.
• Lee, H., Razjouyan, J., Lindburg, C., Srinivasan, K., Gilligan, B., Sharafkhaneh, A., Mehl, M., Currim, F., Ram, S., & Lunden, M. (2018). Sensor-Based Sleep Quality Index (SB-SQI): A new metric to examine the association of office workstation type on stress and sleep.
• Lindberg, C. M., Srinivasan, K., Gilligan, B., Razjouyan, J., Lee, H., Najafi, B., Canada, K. J., Mehl, M. R., Currim, F., Ram, S., Lunden, M. M., Heerwagen, J. H., Kampschroer, K., & Sternberg, E. M. (2018). Effects of office workstation type on physical activity and stress. Occupational and environmental medicine, 75(10), 689-695.
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  Office environments have been causally linked to workplace-related illnesses and stress, yet little is known about how office workstation type is linked to objective metrics of physical activity and stress. We aimed to explore these associations among office workers in US federal office buildings.
• Lindberg, C. M., Srinivasan, K., Gilligan, B., Razjouyan, J., Lee, H., Najafi, B., Mehl, M. R., Currim, F., Ram, S., & Lunden, M. M. (2018). Effects of office workstation type on physical activity and stress. Occupational and environmental medicine, 75(10), 689-695.
• Manvelian, A., Bourassa, K. J., Lawrence, E., Mehl, M. R., & Sbarra, D. A. (2018). With or without you? Loss of self following marital separation. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 37(4), 297-324.
• Mascaro, J. S., Rentscher, K. E., Hackett, P. D., Lori, A., Darcher, A., Rilling, J. K., & Mehl, M. R. (2018). Preliminary evidence that androgen signaling is correlated with men's everyday language. American Journal of Human Biology, 30(4), e23136.
• Mascaro, J. S., Rentscher, K. E., Hackett, P. D., Lori, A., Darcher, A., Rilling, J. K., & Mehl, M. R. (2018). Preliminary evidence that androgen signaling is correlated with men's everyday language. American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council, 30(4), e23136.
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  Testosterone (T) has an integral, albeit complex, relationship with social behavior, especially in the domains of aggression and competition. However, examining this relationship in humans is challenging given the often covert and subtle nature of human aggression and status-seeking. The present study aimed to investigate whether T levels and genetic polymorphisms in the AR gene are associated with social behavior assessed via natural language use.
• Milek, A., Butler, E. A., Tackman, A. M., Kaplan, D. M., Raison, C. L., Sbarra, D. A., Vazire, S., & Mehl, M. R. (2018). "Eavesdropping on Happiness" Revisited: A Pooled, Multisample Replication of the Association Between Life Satisfaction and Observed Daily Conversation Quantity and Quality. Psychological science, 29(9), 1451-1462.
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  In the present study, we aimed to replicate and extend findings by Mehl, Vazire, Holleran, and Clark (2010) that individuals with higher well-being tend to spend less time alone and more time interacting with others (e.g., greater conversation quantity) and engage in less small talk and more substantive conversations (e.g., greater conversation quality). To test the robustness of these effects in a larger and more diverse sample, we used Bayesian integrative data analysis to pool data on subjective life satisfaction and observed daily conversations from three heterogeneous adult samples, in addition to the original sample ( N = 486). We found moderate associations between life satisfaction and amount of alone time, conversation time, and substantive conversations, but no reliable association with small talk. Personality did not substantially moderate these associations. The failure to replicate the original small-talk effect is theoretically and practically important, as it has garnered considerable scientific and lay interest.
• Milek, A., Butler, E. A., Tackman, A. M., Kaplan, D. M., Raison, C. L., Sbarra, D. A., Vazire, S., & Mehl, M. R. (2018). “Eavesdropping on happiness” revisited: A pooled, multisample replication of the association between life satisfaction and observed daily conversation quantity and quality. Psychological science, 29(9), 1451-1462.
• Alisic, E., Gunaratnam, S., Barrett, A., Conroy, R., Jowett, H., Bressan, S., Babl, F., McClure, R., Anderson, V., & Mehl, M. R. (2017). Injury talk: spontaneous parent-child conversations in the aftermath of a potentially traumatic event.
• Bourassa, K. J., Allen, J. J., Mehl, M. R., & Sbarra, D. A. (2017). Impact of Narrative Expressive Writing on Heart Rate, Heart Rate Variability, and Blood Pressure After Marital Separation. Psychosomatic medicine, 79(6), 697--705.
• Bourassa, K. J., Manvelian, A., Boals, A., Mehl, M. R., & Sbarra, D. A. (2017). Tell Me a Story: The Creation of Narrative as a Mechanism of Psychological Recovery Following Marital Separation. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 36(5), 359--379.
• Kaplan, D. M., Raison, C., Milek, A., Tackman, A. M., Pace, T., & Mehl, M. R. (2017). Manifestations of Mindfulness in Daily Life.
• Mascaro, J. S., Rentscher, K. E., Hackett, P. D., Mehl, M. R., & Rilling, J. K. (2017). Child gender influences paternal behavior, language, and brain function.. Behavioral Neuroscience, 131(3), 262.
• Mehl, M. R. (2017). The Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) A Method for the Naturalistic Observation of Daily Social Behavior. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(2), 184--190.
• Mehl, M. R., Raison, C. L., Pace, T. W., Arevalo, J. M., & Cole, S. W. (2017). Natural language indicators of differential gene regulation in the human immune system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(47), 12554--12559.
• Myhre, J. W., Mehl, M. R., & Glisky, E. L. (2017). Cognitive benefits of online social networking for healthy older adults. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 72(5), 752--760.
• Soriano, E. C., Rentscher, K. E., Rohrbaugh, M. J., & Mehl, M. R. (2017). A Semantic Corpus Comparison Analysis of Couple-Focused Interventions for Problematic Alcohol Use. Clinical psychology \& psychotherapy, 24(3), 618--631.
• Wrzus, C., & Mehl, M. R. (2017). Ecological sampling methods for studying everyday situations. The Oxford Handbook of Psychological Situations, 312--327.
• Alisic, E., Barrett, A., Bowles, P., Conroy, R., & Mehl, M. R. (2016). Topical Review: Families Coping With Child Trauma: A Naturalistic Observation Methodology. JOURNAL OF PEDIATRIC PSYCHOLOGY, 41(1), 117-127.
• Alisic, E., Barrett, A., Bowles, P., Conroy, R., & Mehl, M. R. (2016). Topical review: Families coping with child trauma: A naturalistic observation methodology. Journal of pediatric psychology, 41, 117--127.
• Alisic, E., Krishna, R. N., Robbins, M. L., & Mehl, M. R. (2016). A Comparison of Parent and Child Narratives of Children's Recovery From Trauma. JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, 35(2), 224-235.
• Bollich, K. L., Doris, J. M., Vazire, S., Raison, C. L., Jackson, J. J., & Mehl, M. R. (2016). Eavesdropping on character: Assessing everyday moral behaviors. JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN PERSONALITY, 61, 15-21.
• Deters, F. G., Mehl, M. R., & Eid, M. (2016). Social responses to Facebook status updates: The role of extraversion and social anxiety. COMPUTERS IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR, 61, 1-13.
• Dubey, H., Mehl, M. R., & Mankodiya, K. (2016). BigEAR: Inferring the Ambient and Emotional Correlates from Smartphone-based Acoustic Big Data. 2016 IEEE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CONNECTED HEALTH: APPLICATIONS, SYSTEMS AND ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGIES (CHASE), 78-83.
• Janssen, C. W., Lowry, C. A., Mehl, M. R., Allen, J., Kelly, K. L., Gartner, D. E., Medrano, A., Begay, T. K., Rentscher, K., White, J. J., Fridman, A., Roberts, L. J., Robbins, M. L., Hanusch, K., Cole, S. P., & Raison, C. L. (2016). Whole-Body Hyperthermia for the Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA PSYCHIATRY, 73(8), 789-795.
• Ruiz, J. M., Hamann, H. A., Mehl, M. R., & O'Connor, M. (2016). The Hispanic health paradox: From epidemiological phenomenon to contribution opportunities for psychological science. GROUP PROCESSES & INTERGROUP RELATIONS, 19(4), 462-476.
• Ruiz, J., Hamann, H., O'Connor, M., & Mehl, M. R. (2016). The Hispanic Health Paradox: From Epidemiological Phenomenon to Contribution Opportunities for Psychological Science.. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 19, 462-476.
• Sbarra, D., Tackman, A., Dawson, S., Rojo-Wissar, D., & Mehl, M. (2016). Experiential Over-involvement and Sleep Problems Following Marital Separation. PSYCHOSOMATIC MEDICINE, 78(3), A3-A3.
• Srinivasan, K., Currim, F., Ram, S., Lindberg, C., Sternberg, E., Skeath, P., Najafi, B., Razjouyan, J., Lee, H., Foe-Parker, C., Goebel, N., Herzl, R., Mehl, M. R., Gilligan, B., Heerwagen, J., Kampschroer, K., & Canada, K. (2016). Feature Importance and Predictive Modeling for Multi-source Healthcare Data with Missing Values. DH'16: PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2016 DIGITAL HEALTH CONFERENCE, 47-54.
• Tang, C., Mehl, M. R., Eastlick, M. A., He, W. u., & Card, N. A. (2016). A longitudinal exploration of the relations between electronic word-of-mouth indicators and firms' profitability: Findings from the banking industry. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT, 36(6), 1124-1132.
• Alisic, E., Barrett, A., Bowles, P., Babl, F. E., Conroy, R., McClure, R. J., Anderson, V., & Mehl, M. R. (2015). Ear for recovery: protocol for a prospective study on parent-child communication and psychological recovery after paediatric injury. BMJ OPEN, 5(2).
• Alisic, E., Krishna, R. N., Robbins, M. L., & Mehl, M. R. (2015). A Comparison of Parent and Child Narratives of Children’s Recovery From Trauma. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 0261927X15599557.
• Bollich, K. L., Doris, J. M., Vazire, S., Raison, C. L., Jackson, J. J., & Mehl, M. R. (2015). Eavesdropping on character: Assessing everyday moral behaviors. Journal of Research in Personality.
• Carey, A. L., Brucks, M. S., Kuefner, A. C., Holtzman, N. S., Deters, F. G., Back, M. D., Donnellan, M. B., Pennebaker, J. W., & Mehl, M. R. (2015). Narcissism and the Use of Personal Pronouns Revisited (vol 109, pg e1, 2015). JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.
• Rentscher, K. E., Soriano, E. C., Rohrbaugh, M. J., Shoham, V., & Mehl, M. R. (2015). Partner Pronoun Use, Communal Coping, and Abstinence during Couple-Focused Intervention for Problematic Alcohol Use. Family process.
• Wrzus, C., & Mehl, M. R. (2015). Lab and/or field? Measuring personality processes and their social consequences. European Journal of Personality, 29, 250--271.
• Brown, W. C., Tragesser, S. L., Tomko, R. L., Mehl, M. R., & Trull, T. J. (2014). Recall of Expressed Affect During Naturalistically Observed Interpersonal Events in Those With Borderline Personality Disorder or Depressive Disorder. Assessment, 21(1), 73-81.
• Grinberg, A. M., Careaga, J. S., Mehl, M. R., & O'Connor, M. (2014). Social engagement and user immersion in a socially based virtual world. COMPUTERS IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR, 36, 479-486.
• Mehl, M. R. (2014). The sounds of social life: Observing the psychology in our daily lives. APS Observer, 27(3).
• Robbins, M. L., López, A. M., Weihs, K. L., & Mehl, M. R. (2014). Cancer conversations in context: Naturalistic observation of couples coping with breast cancer. Journal of Family Psychology, 28, 380-390.
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  DOI: 10.1037/a0036458
• Skoyen, J. A., Randall, A. K., Mehl, M. R., & Butler, E. A. (2014). “We” overeat, but “I” can stay thin: Pronoun use and body weight in couples who eat to regulate emotion.. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 33, 742-765.
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  ISI 2009 5-year journal impact factor = 2.01 (24/58 in Social Psychology)
• Tomko, R. L., Brown, W. C., Tragesser, S. L., Wood, P. K., Mehl, M. R., & Trull, T. J. (2014). Social context of anger in Borderline Personality Disorder and Depressive Disorders: Findings from a naturalistic observation study. Journal of Personality Disorders, 28(3), 434-448.
• grosse Deters, F., Mehl, M. R., & Eid, M. (2014). Narcissistic power poster? On the relationship between narcissism and status updating activity on Facebook. Journal of Research in Personality, 53, 165-174.
• Borelli, J. L., David, D. H., Rifkin-Graboi, A., Sbarra, D. A., Mehl, M. R., & Mayes, L. C. (2013). Language use in the Adult Attachment Interview: Evidence for attachment-specific emotion regulation. Personal Relationships, 20(1), 23-37.
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  Abstract: Adult attachment classification is traditionally based on qualitative coding of participants' discourse about their attachment history. Word count-based analyses have proven useful for assessing emotional states from narrative. To expand the understanding of how language is used in emotion regulation processes related to attachment, the authors assess 102 college-aged adults' language on the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Autonomous adults use more emotion words and, in particular, negative emotion words. Preoccupied adults use more anger words. Disorganized adults use more experientially connected language and more death/dying words, but also use more second-person pronouns when discussing loss. Language use during the AAI explains variability in self-reported emotional distress above and beyond attachment classifications. Results are discussed in terms of their relevance to emotion and attachment. Copyright © 2012 IARR.
• Deters, F. g., & Mehl, M. R. (2013). Does Posting Facebook Status Updates Increase or Decrease Loneliness? An Online Social Networking Experiment. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4(5), 579-586.
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  Abstract: Online social networking is a pervasive but empirically understudied phenomenon. Strong public opinions on its consequences exist but are backed up by little empirical evidence and almost no causally conclusive, experimental research. The current study tested the psychological effects of posting status updates on Facebook using an experimental design. For 1 week, participants in the experimental condition were asked to post more than they usually do, whereas participants in the control condition received no instructions. Participants added a lab "Research Profile" as a Facebook friend allowing for the objective documentation of protocol compliance, participants' status updates, and friends' responses. Results revealed (1) that the experimentally induced increase in status updating activity reduced loneliness, (2) that the decrease in loneliness was due to participants feeling more connected to their friends on a daily basis, and (3) that the effect of posting on loneliness was independent of direct social feedback (i.e., responses) by friends. © The Author(s) 2012.
• Rentscher, K. E., Rohrbaugh, M. J., Shoham, V., & Mehl, M. R. (2013). Asymmetric partner pronoun use and demand-withdraw interaction in couples coping with health problems. Journal of Family Psychology, 27(5), 691-701.
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  PMID: 24098961;Abstract: Recent research links first-person plural pronoun use (we-talk) by individual romantic partners to adaptive relationship functioning and individual health outcomes. To examine a possible boundary condition of adaptive we-talk in couples coping with health problems, we correlated asymmetric couple-level we/I-ratios (more we-talk relative to I-talk by the spouse than the patient) with a concurrent pattern of directional demand-withdraw (D-W) interaction in which the spouse demands change while the patient withdraws. Couples in which a partner who abused alcohol (n = 65), smoked cigarettes despite having heart or lung disease (n = 24), or had congestive heart failure (n = 58) discussed a health-related disagreement during a video-recorded interaction task. Transcripts of these conversations provided measures of pronoun use for each partner, and trained observers coded D-W patterns from the recordings. As expected, partner asymmetry in we/I-ratio scores predicted directional demand-withdraw, such that spouses who used more we-talk (relative to I-talk) than patients tended to assume the demand role in concurrent D-W interaction. Asymmetric I-talk rather than we-talk accounted for this association, and asymmetric you-talk contributed independently as well. In contrast to previous studies of we-talk by individual partners, the present results identify dyad-level pronoun patterns that clearly do not mark beneficent processes: asymmetric partner we/I-ratios and you-talk reflect problematic demand-withdraw interaction. © 2013 American Psychological Association.
• Robbins, M. L., Mehl, M. R., Smith, H. L., & Weihs, K. L. (2013). Linguistic indicators of patient, couple, and family adjustment following breast cancer. Psycho-Oncology, 22(7), 1501-1508.
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  PMID: 22887054;PMCID: PMC3510347;Abstract: Background This study examined how language reflective of emotional and social processes during a cancer-related discussion relates to patient, couple, and family adjustment after breast cancer. It investigated whether emotional expression or relational focus, manifested in language use, indicates healthy family coping following breast cancer. Methods Family members each completed measures of adjustment (Family Environment Scale, Dyadic Adjustment Scale, and patient Profile of Mood States) and engaged in a 15-min family discussion about how they have coped with breast cancer. Transcripts from the discussion were submitted to a text-analysis software program to obtain frequency of positive and negative emotion words, and personal pronouns spoken by each family member. The relationship between self-reports of adjustment and frequency of language use during the family discussion was analyzed with regression models. Results Partners' positive emotion words were indicative of better family adjustment, patients' negative emotion words indicated greater family conflict, and sons' and daughters' anger words indicated poorer adjustment, whereas their anxiety words indicated better family adjustment. Partner we-talk was related to better dyadic adjustment, and couples' 'you' was somewhat related to worse adjustment at all levels. Conclusions Important information about how a family copes with breast cancer can be obtained by attending to families' emotional and relational language. This study suggests that clinicians and members of families' support networks can gauge how well a family has adapted after the breast cancer experience by attending to the type of words that each family member uses to describe how they coped with breast cancer. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
• Sbarra, D. A., Boals, A., Mason, A. E., Larson, G. M., & Mehl, M. R. (2013). Expressive writing can impede emotional recovery following marital separation. Clinical Psychological Science, 1(2), 120-134.
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  Abstract: Marital separation and divorce are common life events that increase risk for poor health outcomes, yet few intervention studies explore how to mitigate this increased risk. This study implemented an expressive writing (EW) intervention for adults who experienced a recent marital separation. Ninety participants (32 men) were randomly assigned to and completed one of three experimental writing tasks: traditional EW, a novel (narrative-based) type of EW, or control writing. Up to 9 months after this writing, participants who were judged to be actively engaged in a search for meaning concerning their separation reported significantly worse emotional outcomes when assigned to either EW condition relative to control writing. Within the control condition, those participants who were actively engaged in a search for meaning reported the lowest levels of separation-related disturbance. We discuss these results in terms of the factors that may limit and promote psychological recovery following marital separation. © The Author(s) 2013.
• Tenney, E. R., Vazire, S., & Mehl, M. R. (2013). This Examined Life: The Upside of Self-Knowledge for Interpersonal Relationships. PLoS ONE, 8(7).
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  PMID: 23936057;PMCID: PMC3729952;Abstract: Although self-knowledge is an unquestioned good in many philosophical traditions, testing this assumption scientifically has posed a challenge because of the difficulty of measuring individual differences in self-knowledge. In this study, we used a novel, naturalistic, and objective criterion to determine individuals' degree of self-knowledge. Specifically, self-knowledge was measured as the congruence between people's beliefs about how they typically behave and their actual behavior as measured with unobtrusive audio recordings from daily life. We found that this measure of self-knowledge was positively correlated with informants' perceptions of relationship quality. These results suggest that self-knowledge is interpersonally advantageous. Given the importance of relationships for our social species, self-knowledge could have great social value that has heretofore been overlooked. © 2013 Tenney et al.
• Mehl, M. R., Robbins, M. L., & Deters, F. G. (2012). Naturalistic observation of health-relevant social processes: The electronically activated recorder methodology in psychosomatics. Psychosomatic Medicine, 74(4), 410-417.
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  PMID: 22582338;PMCID: PMC3351696;Abstract: This article introduces a novel observational ambulatory monitoring method called the electronically activated recorder (EAR). The EAR is a digital audio recorder that runs on a handheld computer and periodically and unobtrusively records snippets of ambient sounds from participants' momentary environments. In tracking moment-to-moment ambient sounds, it yields acoustic logs of people's days as they naturally unfold. In sampling only a fraction of the time, it protects participants' privacy and makes large observational studies feasible. As a naturalistic observation method, it provides an observer's account of daily life and is optimized for the objective assessment of audible aspects of social environments, behaviors, and interactions (e.g., habitual preferences for social settings, idiosyncratic interaction styles, subtle emotional expressions). This article discusses the EAR method conceptually and methodologically, reviews prior research with it, and identifies three concrete ways in which it can enrich psychosomatic research. Specifically, it can a) calibrate psychosocial effects on health against frequencies of real-world behavior; b) provide ecological observational measures of health-related social processes that are independent of self-report; and c) help with the assessment of subtle and habitual social behaviors that evade self-report but have important health implications. An important avenue for future research lies in merging traditional self-report-based ambulatory monitoring methods with observational approaches such as the EAR to allow for the simultaneous yet methodologically independent assessment of inner, experiential aspects (e.g., loneliness) and outer, observable aspects (e.g., social isolation) of real-world social processes to reveal their unique effects on health. Copyright © 2012 by the American Psychosomatic Society. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.
• Mehl, M. R., Robbins, M. L., & Holleran, S. E. (2012). How taking a word for a word can be problematic: Context-dependent linguistic markers of extraversion and neuroticism. Journal of Methods and Measurement in the Social Sciences, 3, 30-50.
• Rohrbaugh, M. J., Shoham, V., Skoyen, J. A., Jensen, M., & Mehl, M. R. (2012). We-Talk, Communal Coping, and Cessation Success in a Couple-Focused Intervention for Health-Compromised Smokers. Family Process, 51(1), 107-121.
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  PMID: 22428714;Abstract: We investigated first-person plural pronoun use (we-talk) by health-compromised smokers and their spouses as a possible implicit marker of adaptive, problem-resolving communal processes. Twenty couples in which one or both partners used tobacco despite one of them having a heart or lung problem participated in up to 10 sessions of a smoking cessation intervention designed to promote communal coping, where partners define smoking as "our" problem, rather than "your" problem or "my" problem, and take collaborative action to solve it. We used the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count automatic text analysis program to tabulate first-person pronoun use by both partners from transcripts of a pretreatment marital interaction task and later intervention sessions. Results indicated that pretreatment we-talk by the patient's spouse predicted whether the patient remained abstinent 12 months after quitting, and residualized change in we-talk by both partners during the course of intervention (controlling for baseline levels) predicted cessation outcomes as well. These findings add to evidence regarding the prognostic significance of partner we-talk for patient health and provide preliminary documentation of communal coping as a possible mechanism of change in couple-focused intervention. © FPI, Inc.
• Sbarra, D. A., Smith, H. L., & Mehl, M. R. (2012). When leaving your ex, love yourself: Observational ratings of self-compassion predict the course of emotional recovery following marital separation. Psychological Science, 23(3), 261-269.
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  PMID: 22282874;Abstract: Divorce is a highly stressful event, and much remains to be learned about the factors that promote psychological resilience when marriages come to an end. In this study, divorcing adults (N = 109) completed a 4-min stream-of-consciousness recording about their marital separation at an initial laboratory visit. Four judges rated the degree to which participants exhibited self-compassion (defined by self-kindness, an awareness of one's place in shared humanity, and emotional equanimity) in their recordings. Judges evidenced considerable agreement in their ratings of participants' self-compassion, and these ratings demonstrated strong predictive utility: Higher levels of self-compassion at the initial visit were associated with less divorce-related emotional intrusion into daily life at the start of the study, and this effect persisted up to 9 months later. These effects held when we accounted for a number of competing predictors. Self-compassion is a modifiable variable, and if our findings can be replicated, they may have implications for improving the lives of divorcing adults. © The Author(s) 2012.
• Augustine, A. A., Mehl, M. R., & Larsen, R. J. (2011). A positivity bias in written and spoken English and its moderation by personality and gender. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(5), 508-515.
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  Abstract: The human tendency to use positive words ("adorable") more often than negative words ("dreadful") is called the linguistic positivity bias. We find evidence for this bias in two studies of word use, one based on written corpora and another based on naturalistic speech samples. In addition, we demonstrate that the positivity bias applies to nouns and verbs as well as adjectives. We also show that it is found to the same degree in written as well as spoken English. Moreover, personality traits and gender moderate the effect, such that persons high on extraversion and agreeableness and women display a larger positivity bias in naturalistic speech. Results are discussed in terms of how the linguistic positivity bias may serve as a mechanism for social facilitation. People, in general, and some people more than others, tend to talk about the brighter side of life. © The Author(s) 2011.
• Borelli, J. L., Sbarra, D. A., Mehl, M., & David, D. H. (2011). Experiential connectedness in children's attachment interviews: An examination of natural word use. Personal Relationships, 18(3), 341-351.
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  Abstract: Attachment classification derived from narrative analysis is widely used as a marker of psychological organization. In contrast to this top-down approach, bottom-up, word count-based analyses of narratives are also used to measure psychological states. The current study integrates these 2 approaches by examining their overlap in 93 school-aged children. Participants completed the Child Attachment Interview; transcriptions of this interview were subjected to word count-based linguistic analysis. Compared with secure children, dismissing children showed less and preoccupied children showed more signs of experiential connectedness. Disorganized children decreased in experiential connectedness during loss discussions and used more words related to death during nonloss sections of the interview. Results are discussed in terms of their relevance to attachment and relationship research. © 2010 IARR.
• Holleran, S. E., Whitehead, J., Schmader, T., & Mehl, M. R. (2011). Talking shop and shooting the breeze: A study of workplace conversation and job disengagement among STEM faculty. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(1), 65-71.
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  Abstract: Past research has examined women's subjective satisfaction in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), but the actual events that correlate with disengagement have not been identified. In this study, workplace conversations of 45 female and male STEM faculty were sampled using the Electronically Activated Recorder, a naturalistic observation method, coded for research or socializing content, and correlated with self-reported job disengagement. Both men and women were less likely to discuss research in conversations with female as compared to male colleagues, and when discussing research with men, women were rated as less competent than men. Consistent with the idea that women in STEM experience social identity threat, discussing research with male colleagues was associated with greater disengagement for women, whereas socializing with male colleagues was associated with less disengagement. These patterns did not hold for men. These findings point to the unique challenges women face in STEM disciplines. © The Author(s) 2011.
• Jarrold, W., Javitz, H. S., Krasnow, R., Peintner, B., Yeh, E., Swan, G. E., & Mehl, M. (2011). Depression and self-focused language in structured interviews with older men. Psychological Reports, 109(2), 686-700.
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  PMID: 22238866;Abstract: The association between depression and self-focused language has been found to varying extents across studies. The presence or absence of the association may depend on the communicative context. Based on Beck's depression model, a broad, evaluative self-focused question was predicted more likely to elicit a stronger association than a full interview containing a more heterogeneous question set of items. The spontaneous speech obtained during structured interviews of 26 depressed and nondepressed older men, an as-yet little studied population, was analyzed. Results were consistent with the hypothesis that association between self-focused language and depression was demonstrated in the target question but not across the entire interview. The results may explain some of the aforementioned discrepancies in prior studies. © Psychological Reports 2011.
• Mehl, M., & Deters, F. G. (2011). The sounds of social life: Naturalistic (acoustic) observation sampling. MM'11 - Proceedings of the 2011 ACM Multimedia Conference and Co-Located Workshops - JHGBU 2011 Workshop, J-HGBU'11, 1-5.
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  Abstract: This paper reviews a novel methodology called the Electronically Activated Recorder or EAR. The EAR is a portable audio recorder that periodically records snippets of ambient sounds from participants' momentary environments. In tracking moment-to-moment ambient sounds, it yields acoustic logs of people's days as they naturally unfold. In sampling only a fraction of the time, it protects participants' privacy. As a naturalistic observation method, it provides an observer's account of daily life and is optimized for the assessment of audible aspects of social environments, behaviors, and interactions. The paper discusses the EAR method conceptually and methodologically and identifies three ways in which it can enrich research in psychology and related fields. Specifically, it can (1) provide ecological, behavioral criteria that are independent of self-report, (2) calibrate psychological effects against frequencies of real-world behavior, and (3) help with the assessment of subtle and habitual behaviors that evade self-report. Copyright 2011 ACM.
• Mehl, M., Robbins, M. L., Focella, E. S., Kasle, S., López, A. M., Weihs, K. L., & Mehl, M. R. (2011). Naturalistically observed swearing, emotional support, and depressive symptoms in women coping with illness. Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association, 30(6).
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  The goal of this study was to explore the intra- and interpersonal consequences of swearing. Specifically, it investigated what implications swearing has for coping with and adjustment to illness.
• Robbins, M. L., Focella, E. S., Kasle, S., López, A. M., Weihs, K. L., & Mehl, M. R. (2011). Naturalistically Observed Swearing, Emotional Support, and Depressive Symptoms in Women Coping With Illness. Health Psychology, 30(6), 789-792.
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  PMID: 21574707;PMCID: PMC3193870;Abstract: Objective: The goal of this study was to explore the intra- and interpersonal consequences of swearing. Specifically, it investigated what implications swearing has for coping with and adjustment to illness. Methods: The present project combined data from two pilot studies of 13 women with rheumatoid arthritis and 21 women with breast cancer. Participants wore the Electronically Activated Recorder, an unobtrusive observation sampling method that periodically records snippets of ambient sounds, on weekends to track spontaneous swearing in their daily interactions, and completed self-reported measures of depressive symptoms and emotional support. Results: Naturalistically observed swearing in the presence of others, but not alone, was related to decreases in reported emotional support and increases in depressive symptoms over the study period. Further, decreases in emotional support mediated the effect of swearing on disease-severity adjusted changes in depressive symptoms. Conclusion: These exploratory results are consistent with the notion that swearing can sometimes repel emotional support at the expense of psychological adjustment. This is one of the first studies to examine the role of swearing, a ubiquitous but understudied psychological phenomenon, in a medical context. © 2011 American Psychological Association.
• Robbins, M. L., Mehl, M. R., Holleran, S. E., & Kasle, S. (2011). Naturalistically Observed Sighing and Depression in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients: A Preliminary Study. Health Psychology, 30(1), 129-133.
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  PMID: 21299301;PMCID: PMC3059549;Abstract: Objective: This study tested the degree to which naturalistically observed sighing in daily life is a behavioral indicator of depression and reported physical symptoms (i.e., experienced pain and flare days) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. Design: Thirteen RA patients wore the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), an observational ambulatory assessment tool, for two weekends (Friday through Sunday) approximately one month apart. The EAR periodically recorded snippets of ambient sounds from participants' momentary environments (50 s every 18 min). Sighs were coded from the sampled ambient sounds. Main Outcome Measures: Depression was assessed with the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale and the Beck Depression Inventory. Pain during the past month was assessed with a 10-cm visual-analog scale, and number of flare days during the prior 6 months was reported. Results: Sighing was significantly and strongly related to patients' levels of depression and nonsignificantly and less strongly related to their reported pain and number of flare days. Conclusion: The findings suggest that sighing can serve as an observable marker of depression in RA patients. Because the sample size was small, the findings should be considered preliminary. © 2011 American Psychological Association.
• Holtzman, N. S., Vazire, S., & Mehl, M. R. (2010). Sounds like a narcissist: Behavioral manifestations of narcissism in everyday life. Journal of Research in Personality, 44(4), 478-484.
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  Abstract: Little is known about narcissists' everyday behavior. The goal of this study was to describe how narcissism is manifested in everyday life. Using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), we obtained naturalistic behavior from participants' everyday lives. The results suggest that the defining characteristics of narcissism that have been established from questionnaire and laboratory-based studies are borne out in narcissists' day-to-day behaviors. Narcissists do indeed behave in more extraverted and less agreeable ways than non-narcissists, skip class more (among narcissists high in exploitativeness/entitlement only), and use more sexual language. Furthermore, we found that the link between narcissism and disagreeable behavior is strengthened when controlling for self-esteem, thus extending prior questionnaire-based findings (Paulhus, Robins, Trzesniewski, & Tracy, 2004) to observed, real-world behavior. © 2010 Elsevier Inc.
• Mason, A. E., Sbarra, D. A., & Mehl, M. R. (2010). Thin-Slicing Divorce: Thirty Seconds of Information Predict Changes in Psychological Adjustment Over 90 Days. Psychological Science, 21(10), 1420-1422.
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  PMID: 20739671;
• Mehl, M. R., Vazire, S., Holleran, S. E., & Clark, C. S. (2010). Eavesdropping on happiness: Well-being is related to having less small talk and more substantive conversations. Psychological Science, 21(4), 539-541.
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  PMID: 20424097;PMCID: PMC2861779;
• Mehl, M., Mason, A. E., Sbarra, D. A., & Mehl, M. R. (2010). Thin-slicing divorce: thirty seconds of information predict changes in psychological adjustment over 90 days. Psychological science, 21(10).
• Rodriguez, A. J., Holleran, S. E., & Mehl, M. R. (2010). Reading Between the Lines: The Lay Assessment of Subclinical Depression From Written Self-Descriptions. Journal of Personality, 78(2), 575-598.
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  PMID: 20433631;Abstract: This study investigated how laypersons assess subclinical depression in others from 2 forms of written self-descriptions: personal diaries and online blogs. Fifty-seven target participants wrote essays describing their personality as they would in each context. Naïve judges then rated targets' depression from the 2 sets of self-descriptions. The judges achieved high and comparable levels of accuracy in the 2 self-descriptions by basing their impressions on linguistic cues indicative of depression-related emotional, cognitive, temporal, and social processes. Consistent with the idea that diaries particularly afford the disclosure of socially sensitive concerns whereas online blogs particularly afford the disclosure of socially acceptable concerns, several cues were indicative of depression only in the targets' diaries (sadness words, cognitive mechanism words, metaphysical references) or their online blogs (e.g., swear words, references to sleep). For most of these cues, judges were implicitly aware of their context-specific diagnosticity. © 2010, Copyright the Authors. Journal compilation.
• Holleran, S. E., Mehl, M. R., & Levitt, S. (2009). Eavesdropping on social life: The accuracy of stranger ratings of daily behavior from thin slices of natural conversations. Journal of Research in Personality, 43(4), 660-672.
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  Abstract: In two studies the authors examined the accuracy of stranger ratings of daily behavior based on thin slices of natural conversations. Methodologically, the studies extend past research by using a behavioral accuracy criterion, benchmarking zero-acquaintance accuracy against target and informant accuracy, and employing a representative design that sampled contexts from targets' daily situations. Theoretically, the studies investigate how stereotypes influence the accuracy of first impressions depending on their sample-based validity. Across both studies, after listening to five conversational snippets (2.5 min total), the ratings of strangers were as accurate as the targets' and informants' ratings. Further, ratings for gender-stereotypic behaviors with a kernel of truth resulted in greater initial accuracy than ratings for gender-stereotypic behaviors with no kernel of truth. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
• Ramírez-Esparza, N., Mehl, M. R., Álvarez-Bermúdez, J., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2009). Are Mexicans more or less sociable than Americans? Insights from a naturalistic observation study. Journal of Research in Personality, 43(1), 1-7.
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  Abstract: Stereotypes about Mexicans are that they are outgoing, talkative, sociable, and extraverted. However, in self-reports, Mexicans rate themselves as less extraverted than Americans. To resolve this paradox, we measured self-reported sociability using a personality questionnaire, and behavioral sociability using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) in Mexican and American students. The results showed that Mexicans saw themselves as less sociable than Americans, but they behaved more sociably in their everyday lives. The results also showed that expressions of sociability differed across cultures in accordance with manifestations of interdependent-independent selves. Whereas Mexicans socialized more often in public environments and by interacting with a person who is immediately present, Americans socialized more in private environments and by interacting with remote persons. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
• Holleran, S. E., & Mehl, M. R. (2007). Let me read your mind: Personality judgments based on a person's natural stream of thought. Journal of Research in Personality.
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  ;Collaborative with graduate student: Yes;
• Holleran, S. E., & Mehl, M. R. (2008). Let me read your mind: Personality judgments based on a person's natural stream of thought. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(3), 747-754.
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  Abstract: Past research on the accuracy of personality judgments has largely focused on person perception scenarios that are public in nature (e.g., face-to-face interactions, personal websites). This study investigated the accuracy of personality judgments on the basis of highly private information: a person's natural stream of thought. Nine naïve judges rated the personality of 90 targets on the basis of their 20-min stream-of-consciousness essays. Judges' level of accuracy was significant and substantial for all Big Five dimensions. The substantial and relatively uniform accuracy across all Big Five dimensions suggests that a person's moment-to-moment thoughts provide good information for the accurate judgment of personality in general rather than specific diagnostic information for the accurate judgment of private traits such as Neuroticism. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
• Rohrbaugh, M. J., Mehl, M. R., Shoham, V., Reilly, E. S., & Ewy, G. A. (2008). Prognostic Significance of Spouse We Talk in Couples Coping With Heart Failure. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 76(5), 781-789.
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  PMID: 18837595;Abstract: Recent research suggests that marital quality predicts the survival of patients with heart failure (HF), and it is hypothesized that a communal orientation to coping marked by first-person plural pronoun use (we talk) may be a factor in this. During a home interview, 57 HF patients (46 men and 16 women) and their spouses discussed how they coped with the patients' health problems. Analysis of pronoun counts from both partners revealed that we talk by the spouse, but not the patient, independently predicted positive change in the patient's HF symptoms and general health over the next 6 months and did so better than direct self-report measures of marital quality and the communal coping construct. We talk by the patient and spouse did not correlate, however, and gender had no apparent moderating effects on how pronoun use predicted health change. The results highlight the utility of automatic text analysis in couple-interaction research and provide further evidence that looking beyond the patient can improve prediction of health outcomes. © 2008 American Psychological Association.
• Vazire, S., & Mehl, M. R. (2008). Knowing Me, Knowing You: The Accuracy and Unique Predictive Validity of Self-Ratings and Other-Ratings of Daily Behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1202-1216.
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  PMID: 18954202;Abstract: Many people assume that they know themselves better than anyone else knows them. Recent research on inaccuracies in self-perception, however, suggests that self-knowledge may be more limited than people typically assume. In this article, the authors examine the possibility that people may know a person as well as (or better than) that person knows himself or herself. In Study 1, the authors document the strength of laypeople's beliefs that the self is the best expert. In Study 2, the authors provide a direct test of self- and other-accuracy using an objective and representative behavioral criterion. To do this, the authors compared self- and other-ratings of daily behavior to real-life measures of act frequencies assessed unobtrusively over 4 days. Our results show that close others are as accurate as the self in predicting daily behavior. Furthermore, accuracy varies across behaviors for both the self and for others, and the two perspectives often independently predict behavior. These findings suggest that there is no single perspective from which a person is known best and that both the self and others possess unique insight into how a person typically behaves. © 2008 American Psychological Association.
• Wolf, M., Horn, A. B., Mehl, M. R., Haug, S., Pennebaker, J. W., & Kordy, H. (2008). Computer-aided quantitative textanalysis: Equivalence and reliability of the German adaptation of the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Diagnostica, 54(2), 85-98.
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  Abstract: We introduce the German adaptation of the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), a computer-aided dictionary-based text analysis program. The LIWC was developed by Pennebaker and colleagues (2001) to analyze essays in the context of expressive writing experiments. Two studies on the performance of the German LIWC are reported: (1) The equivalence of the original LIWC version and the German dictionary is investigated in a sample of N = 122 bilingual text units. (2) In a sample of N = 104 E-Mails, the robustness of the LIWC categories with respect to typing errors is analyzed. The results show that most of the LIWC categories display high equivalence to their English counterparts. Furthermore, the LIWC is found to be reliable with regard to the typing quality of E-Mails. The findings indicate the usefulness of the LIWC for analyzing German texts. The reliability of the LIWC highlights its usefulness particularly for the analysis of natural language from computer-mediated communication. © Hogrefe Verlag Göttingen 2008.
• Mairesse, F., Walker, M. A., Mehl, M. R., & Moore, R. K. (2007). Using linguistic cues for the automatic recognition of personality in conversation and text. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 30, 457-500.
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  Abstract: It is well known that utterances convey a great deal of information about the speaker in addition to their semantic content. One such type of information consists of cues to the speaker's personality traits, the most fundamental dimension of variation between humans. Recent work explores the automatic detection of other types of pragmatic variation in text and conversation, such as emotion, deception, speaker charisma, dominance, point of view, subjectivity, opinion and sentiment. Personality affects these other aspects of linguistic production, and thus personality recognition may be useful for these tasks, in addition to many other potential applications. However, to date, there is little work on the automatic recognition of personality traits. This article reports experimental results for recognition of all Big Five personality traits, in both conversation and text, utilising both self and observer ratings of personality. While other work reports classification results, we experiment with classification, regression and ranking models. For each model, we analyse the effect of different feature sets on accuracy. Results show that for some traits, any type of statistical model performs significantly better than the baseline, but ranking models perform best overall. We also present an experiment suggesting that ranking models are more accurate than multi-class classifiers for modelling personality. In addition, recognition models trained on observed personality perform better than models trained using self-reports, and the optimal feature set depends on the personality trait. A qualitative analysis of the learned models confirms previous findings linking language and personality, while revealing many new linguistic markers. © 2007 AI Access Foundation. All rights reserved.
• Mairesse, F., Walker, M. A., Mehl, M. R., & Moore, R. K. (2007). Using linguistic cues for the automatic recognition of personality in conversation and text. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.
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  ;Full Citation: Mairesse, F., Walker, M. A., Mehl, M. R., & Moore, R. K. (2007). Using linguistic cues for the automatic recognition of personality in conversation and text. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 30, 457-500.;Other collaborative: Yes;Specify other collaborative: Collaborative with faculty member at another insitution;
• Mehl, M. R. (2007). Eavesdropping on health: A naturalistic observation approach for social-health research.. Social and Personality Psychology Compass.
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  ;Full Citation: Mehl, M. R. (2007). Eavesdropping on health: A naturalistic observation approach for social-health research. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 1, 359-380. ;
• Mehl, M. R., & Holleran, S. E. (2007). An empirical analysis of the obtrusiveness of and participants' compliance with the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR). European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 23(4), 248-257.
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  Abstract: In this article, the authors provide an empirical analysis of the obtrusiveness of and participants' compliance with a relatively new psychological ambulatory assessment method, called the electronically activated recorder or EAR. The EAR is a modified portable audio-recorder that periodically records snippets of ambient sounds from participants' daily environments. In tracking moment-to-moment ambient sounds, the EAR yields an acoustic log of a person's day as it unfolds. As a naturalistic observation sampling method, it provides an observer's account of daily life and is optimized for the assessment of audible aspects of participants' naturally-occurring social behaviors and interactions. Measures of self-reported and behaviorally-assessed EAR obtrusiveness and compliance were analyzed in two samples. After an initial 2-h period of relative obtrusiveness, participants habituated to wearing the EAR and perceived it as fairly unobtrusive both in a short-term (2 days, N = 96) and a longer-term (10-11 days, N = 11) monitoring. Compliance with the method was high both during the short-term and longer-term monitoring. Somewhat reduced compliance was identified over the weekend; this effect appears to be specific to student populations. Important privacy and data confidentiality considerations around the EAR method are discussed. © 2007 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers.
• Mehl, M. R., & Holleran, S. E. (2007). An empirical analysis of the obtrusiveness of and participants' compliance with the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR). European Journal of Psychological Assessment.
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  ;Full Citation: Mehl, M. R., & Holleran, S. E. (2007). An empirical analysis of the obtrusiveness of and participants' compliance with the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR). European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 23, 248-257.;Collaborative with graduate student: Yes;
• Mehl, M. R., Vazire, S., Ramírez-Esparza, N., Slatcher, R. B., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2007). Are women really more talkative than men?. Science, 317(5834), 82-.
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  PMID: 17615349;
• Mehl, M. R., Vazire, S., RamĂ­rez-Esparza, N., Slatcher, R. B., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2007). Are women really more talkative than men?. Science.
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  ;Full Citation: Mehl, M. R., Vazire, S., RamĂ­rez-Esparza, N., Slatcher, R. B., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2007). Are women really more talkative than men? Science, 317, 82.;Other collaborative: Yes;Specify other collaborative: Collaborative with faculty members at other insitutions;
• Sellers, G., Mehl, ., R., M., Josephs, ., & A., R. (2007). Hormones and personality: Testosterone as a marker of individual differences. Journal of Research in Personality.
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  ;Full Citation: Guinn Sellers, J., Mehl, M. R., & Josephs, R. A. (2007). Hormones and personality: Testosterone as a marker of individual differences. Journal of Research in Personality. 41, 126-138.;Other collaborative: Yes;Specify other collaborative: Collaborative with faculty members at other institutions;
• Sellers, J. G., Mehl, M. R., & Josephs, R. A. (2007). Hormones and personality: Testosterone as a marker of individual differences. Journal of Research in Personality, 41(1), 126-138.
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  Abstract: Recently, testosterone (T) has been linked to behaviors that are conceptually related to dominance as a personality characteristic. Although evidence for this association is growing, the psychometric properties of T as an individual difference variable have been largely neglected. For T to be considered a biological marker of dispositional dominance it is critical that it demonstrates high test-retest reliability and good convergent and discriminant validity. Two studies tested the temporal stability of salivary T in humans and the relationship between T and traditional measures of personality. Across both studies, test-retest reliability for T was high and comparable to the short-term stability of questionnaire-based and implicitly assessed personality assessment instruments. In being modestly correlated with self-reported dominance, T showed some evidence of convergent validity. In being statistically independent from conceptually unrelated personality constructs (such as Emotional Stability and Openness to Experience) it showed good evidence of discriminant validity. The findings strengthen the psychometric foundation for using T as a hormonal marker of individual differences. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
• Lyons, E. J., Mehl, M. R., & Pennebaker, J. (2006). Pro-anorexics and recovering anorexics differ in their linguistic Internet self-presentation.. Journal of Psychosomatic Research.
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  ;Full Citation: Lyons, E. J., Mehl, M. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). Pro-anorexics and recovering anorexics differ in their linguistic Internet self-presentation. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 60, 253-256.;Other collaborative: Yes;Specify other collaborative: Collaborative with faculty member at other institution;
• Lyons, E. J., Mehl, M. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). Pro-anorexics and recovering anorexics differ in their linguistic Internet self-presentation. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 60(3), 253-256.
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  PMID: 16516656;Abstract: Objective: Pro-anorexia has emerged as a new and emotionally charged eating disorder phenomenon. This study explored the linguistic markers of differences in Internet self-presentation of self-identified pro-anorexics who defend anorexia as a lifestyle and self-identified anorexics in recovery. Method: One hundred sixty-two Internet message board entries and 56 homepages originating from either pro-anorexics or recovering anorexics were analyzed for linguistic markers of emotional, cognitive, and social functioning, temporal focus, and anorexia-related psychological concerns. Results: Across both text sources, pro-anorexics displayed more positive emotions, less anxiety, a lower degree of cognitive reflection, and lower levels of self-directed attention than did recovering anorexics. Pro-anorexics were also more focused on the present and less on the past. Finally, pro-anorexics were more preoccupied with eating and less with school-related issues and death. Conclusion: Linguistically, pro-anorexics and recovering anorexics engage in distinct psychological self-presentation styles. More research is needed to understand the clinical implications of these different linguistic styles. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
• Mehl, M. R. (2006). The lay assessment of sub-clinical depression in daily life. Psychological Assessment.
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  ;Full Citation: Mehl, M. R. (2006). The lay assessment of sub-clinical depression in daily life. Psychological Assessment, 18, 340-345.;
• Mehl, M. R. (2006). The lay assessment of subclinical depression in daily life. Psychological Assessment, 18(3), 340-345.
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  PMID: 16953737;Abstract: This study examined how laypersons assess subclinical depression in others on the basis of information about their daily lives. For 2 days, 96 participants were tracked with the Electronically Activated Recorder, a naturalistic observation method that samples ambient sounds from participants' momentary environments. Judges rated participants' levels of depression after listening to the sampled ambient sounds. Participants' depressive symptoms were assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory. Overall, judges showed little accuracy at determining participants' levels of depressive symptoms from the ambient sounds. Exploratory analyses, however, revealed that judges were more accurate among moderately and severely depressed participants, presumably because the cues judges used to assess depression (e.g., spending time alone, not socializing, not laughing) discriminated successfully only at high levels of subclinical depression. Copyright 2006 by the American Psychological Association.
• Mehl, M. R., Gosling, S. D., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). Personality in its natural habitat: Manifestations and implicit folk theories of personality in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 862-877.
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  PMID: 16737378;Abstract: To examine the expression of personality in its natural habitat, the authors tracked 96 participants over 2 days using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), which samples snippets of ambient sounds in participants' immediate environments. Participants' Big Five scores were correlated with EAR-derived information on their daily social interactions, locations, activities, moods, and language use; these quotidian manifestations were generally consistent with the trait definitions and (except for Openness) often gender specific. To identify implicit folk theories about daily manifestations of personality, the authors correlated the EAR-derived information with impressions of participants based on their EAR sounds; judges' implicit folk theories were generally accurate (especially for Extraversion) and also partially gender specific. The findings point to the importance of naturalistic observation studies on how personality is expressed and perceived in the natural stream of everyday behavior. Copyright 2006 by the American Psychological Association.
• Mehl, M. R., Gosling, S. D., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). Personality in its natural habitat: Manifestations and implicit folk theories of personality in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
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  ;Full Citation: Mehl, M. R., Gosling, S. D., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). Personality in its natural habitat: Manifestations and implicit folk theories of personality in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 862-877.;Other collaborative: Yes;Specify other collaborative: Collaborative with faculty member at other institution;
• Mehl, M., & Mehl, M. R. (2006). The lay assessment of subclinical depression in daily life. Psychological assessment, 18(3).
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  This study examined how laypersons assess subclinical depression in others on the basis of information about their daily lives. For 2 days, 96 participants were tracked with the Electronically Activated Recorder, a naturalistic observation method that samples ambient sounds from participants' momentary environments. Judges rated participants' levels of depression after listening to the sampled ambient sounds. Participants' depressive symptoms were assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory. Overall, judges showed little accuracy at determining participants' levels of depressive symptoms from the ambient sounds. Exploratory analyses, however, revealed that judges were more accurate among moderately and severely depressed participants, presumably because the cues judges used to assess depression (e.g., spending time alone, not socializing, not laughing) discriminated successfully only at high levels of subclinical depression.
• Cohn, M. A., Mehl, M. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2004). Linguistic markers of psychological change surrounding September 11, 2001. Psychological Science, 15(10), 687-693.
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  PMID: 15447640;Abstract: The diaries of 1,084 U.S. users of an on-line journaling service were downloaded for a period of 4 months spanning the 2 months prior to and after the September 11 attacks. Linguistic analyses of the journal entries revealed pronounced psychological changes in response to the attacks. In the short term, participants expressed more negative emotions, were more cognitively and socially engaged, and wrote with greater psychological distance. After 2 weeks, their moods and social referencing returned to baseline, and their use of cognitive-analytic words dropped below baseline. Over the next 6 weeks, social referencing decreased, and psychological distancing remained elevated relative to baseline. Although the effects were generally stronger for individuals highly preoccupied with September 11, even participants who hardly wrote about the events showed comparable language changes. This study bypasses many of the methodological obstacles of trauma research and provides a fine-grained analysis of the time line of human coping with upheaval.
• Horn, A. B., & Mehl, M. R. (2004). Expressive writing as a coping-tool. A state of the art review. Verhaltenstherapie, 14(4), 274-283.
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  Abstract: This article provides a state of the art review on the research on Expressive Writing (EW). In the paradigm originally developed by Pennebaker, participants write about a traumatic experience or a neutral topic on 3-4 days for 15-20 minutes. A large number of studies has now documented the positive effects of EW on physical and mental health. It has been shown that in the months after the study, participants who write about a traumatic experience go to the doctor less often, show improved immune function, report fewer symptoms, are less depressed and anxious and have generally a higher well-being as compared to the control group. Three major models have been proposed to explain the effects of EW. The initial studies assumed that a disclosure induced physiological disinhibition was responsible for its effects. Current research focuses on linguistic and cognitive processes according to which EW fosters the development of a coherent narrative about the events that then can be stored more efficiently and be forgotten more easily. According to the most recent model, EW facilitates social processes that enable individuals to approach others more actively and become better integrated into their social network. Other approaches focus on habituation processes as potential mediators. The different models can be integrated in an emotion regulation model. Finally, potentials of the paradigm in the real world are discussed and show how EW can be used for personal, educational and therapeutic purposes. © 2004 S. Karger GmbH.
• Liehr, P., Mehl, M. R., Summers, L. C., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2004). Connecting with others in the midst of stressful upheaval on September 11, 2001. Applied Nursing Research, 17(1), 2-9.
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  PMID: 14991550;Abstract: This study was originally planned from September tenth through twelfth to assess concurrent use of three real-time data sources during a usual day. When the World Trade Center towers collapsed, the plan expanded to describe 24-hour blood pressure and heart rate, natural environment word use, television viewing/radio listening, and self-reported diary feelings for six undergraduate students in the midst of stressful upheaval. Heart rate, "we" word-use and television viewing/radio listening increased over time. Higher negative and lower positive feelings/emotions occurred during morning hours on September 11. Students connected with others and shared good thoughts. Measurement with real-time data sources was informative. © 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
• Mehl, M. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2003). The Social Dynamics of a Cultural Upheaval: Social Interactions Surrounding September 11, 2001. Psychological Science, 14(6), 579-585.
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  PMID: 14629689;Abstract: Using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), a new methodology for sampling behavioral data in naturalistic settings, we tracked the social lives of 11 people by recording 30-s snippets of ambient sounds in their environment approximately every 12 min. Participants wore the EAR continuously for 10 days from September 11, 2001. Pre-September 11 baseline data were available for all participants. Analyses of the coded sound information showed that although participants did not change in their overall amount of interactions, they gradually shifted from group conversations to dyadic interactions. Exploratory analyses revealed that a relative increase in dyadic interactions over the first 10 days after September 11 was marginally related to better psychological adjustment at follow-up. The findings have relevance for the understanding of stress and affiliation and normal psychological reactions to emergencies.
• Mehl, M. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2003). The Sounds of Social Life: A Psychometric Analysis of Students' Daily Social Environments and Natural Conversations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(4), 857-870.
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  PMID: 12703653;Abstract: The natural conversations and social environments of 52 undergraduates were tracked across two 2-day periods separated by 4 weeks using a computerized tape recorder (the Electronically Activated Recorder [EAR]). The EAR was programmed to record 30-s snippets of ambient sounds approximately every 12 min during participants' waking hours. Students' social environments and use of language in their natural conversations were mapped in terms of base rates and temporal stability. The degree of cross-context consistency and between-speaker synchrony in language use was assessed. Students' social worlds as well as their everyday language were highly consistent across time and context. The study sheds light on a methodological blind spot - the sampling of naturalistic social information from an unobtrusive observer's perspective.
• Pennebaker, J. W., Mehl, M. R., & Niederhoffer, K. G. (2003). Psychological Aspects of Natural Language Use: Our Words, Our Selves. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 547-577.
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  PMID: 12185209;Abstract: The words people use in their daily lives can reveal important aspects of their social and psychological worlds. With advances in computer technology, text analysis allows researchers to reliably and quickly assess features of what people say as well as subtleties in their linguistic styles. Following a brief review of several text analysis programs, we summarize some of the evidence that links natural word use to personality, social and situational fluctuations, and psychological interventions. Of particular interest are findings that point to the psychological value of studying particles - parts of speech that include pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctives, and auxiliary verbs. Particles, which serve as the glue that holds nouns and regular verbs together, can serve as markers of emotional state, social identity, and cognitive styles.
• Mehl, M. R., Pennebaker, J. W., Crow, D. M., Dabbs, J., & Price, J. H. (2001). The Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR): A device for sampling naturalistic daily activities and conversations. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 33(4), 517-523.
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  PMID: 11816455;Abstract: A recording device called the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) is described. The EAR tape-records for 30 sec once every 12 min for 2-4 days. It is lightweight and portable, and it can be worn comfortably by participants in their natural environment. The acoustic data samples provide a nonobtrusive record of the language used and settings entered by the participant. Preliminary psychometric findings suggest that the EAR data accurately reflect individuals' natural social, linguistic, and psychological lives. The data presented in this article were collected with a first-generation EAR system based on analog tape recording technology, but a second generation digital EAR is now available.

Proceedings Publications

• Coffino, J. A., Kaplan, D. M., Raison, C. L., & Mehl, M. R. (2021). ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN BMI AND SOCIAL BEHAVIORS WHILE EATING: A NATURALISTIC OBSERVATION STUDY. In ANNALS OF BEHAVIORAL MEDICINE, 55.
• Sbarra, D. A., Mehl, M., Jordan, K., & Tackman, A. (2020, 2020). Epigenetic Age Acceleration Following Marital Separation and Divorce: A Critical Role for Daily Social Behaviors?. In PSYCHOSOMATIC MEDICINE, 82, A147-A148.
• Coppola, A. M., Mehl, M. R., Tackman, A. M., Dawson, S. C., & Sbarra, D. A. (2019, 2019). ATTACHMENT ANXIETY MODERATES THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN TIME SPENT WITH EX-PARTNER AND SLEEP EFFICIENCY FOLLOWING DIVORCE. In PSYCHOSOMATIC MEDICINE, 81, A2-A2.
• Yordanova, K. Y., Demiray, B., Mehl, M. R., & Martin, M. (2019, 2019). Automatic detection of everyday social behaviours and environments from verbatim transcripts of daily conversations. In 2019 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom, 1-10.
• Palitsky, R., Kaplan, D. M., Sullivan, D., & Mehl, M. R. (2018, 2018). INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN RELIGIOSITY INFLUENCE THE ACCEPTABILITY OF AND RESPONSE TO MINDFULNESS-BASED INTERVENTIONS. In ANNALS OF BEHAVIORAL MEDICINE, 52, S520-S520.
• Rentscher, K., Rohrbaugh, M., & Mehl, M. (2018, 2018). Measurement considerations for the assessment of communal coping in a therapy context. In ANNALS OF BEHAVIORAL MEDICINE, 52, S442-S442.
• Ruiz, J. M., Butler, M., Wightman, P., Mehl, M. R., Flores, M. A., Hamann, H. A., & Calhoun, E. (2018, 2018). Ethnic differences in Arizona Hospital Utilization Trends: Population-level Evidence for a broader Hispanic Health Paradox. In ANNALS OF BEHAVIORAL MEDICINE, 52, S470-S470.
• Kaplan, D. M., & Mehl, M. R. (2017). MOTIVATIONS FOR MEDITATING: AN EXPLORATION OF THE MOTIVATIONAL, PERSONALITY AND PRACTICE CHARACTERISTICS OF MEDITATION PRACTITIONERS. In PSYCHOSOMATIC MEDICINE, 79.
• Rentscher, K., Rohrbaugh, M., & Mehl, M. (2017). PARTNER COMMUNAL COPING IN THE CONTEXT OF COUPLE-FOCUSED INTERVENTIONS FOR HEALTH PROBLEMS. In ANNALS OF BEHAVIORAL MEDICINE, 51.
• Robbins, M. L., Raison, C., & Mehl, M. R. (2017). The EAR as a Naturalistic Observation Measure of Patients' Social Behavior. In PSYCHOSOMATIC MEDICINE, 79.
• Srinivasan, K., Currim, F., Ram, S., Lindberg, C., Sternberg, E. M., Skeath, P. R., Najafi, B., Razjouyan, J., Lee, H., Mehl, M. R., Herzl, D., Herzl, R., Lunden, M., Goebel, N., Andrews, S., Gilligan, B., Heerwagen, J., Kampschroer, K., & Canada, K. (2017, July, 2-5). A Regularization Approach for Identifying Cumulative Lagged Effects in Smart Health Applications. In 7th International Conference on Digital Health, London, 2017, 99-103.
• Srinivasan, K., Currim, F., Ram, S., Mehl, M. R., Lindberg, C., Sternberg, E., Skeath, P., Herzl, D., Herzl, R., Lunden, M., & others, . (2017). A Regularization Approach for Identifying Cumulative Lagged Effects in Smart Health Applications. In Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference on Digital Health.
• Srinivasan, K., Currim, F., Ram, S., Lindberg, C., Sternberg, E. M., Skeath, P. R., Najafi, B., Razjouyan, J., Lee, H., Foe-Parker, C., Goebel, N., Herzl, R., Mehl, M. R., Gilligan, B., Heerwagen, J., Kampschroer, K., & Canada, K. (2016, April, 11-15). Feature importance and predictive modeling for multi-source healthcare data with missing values. In 6th International Conference on Digital Health, Proceedings of World Wide Web Conference, Montreal, 2016 (WWW 2016).
• Krietsch, K. N., Dawson, S., Cook, J. D., Sbarra, D. A., Mehl, M. R., & Bootzin, R. R. (2013). Time since separation predicts changes in TST in recently separated men. In Sleep, 36, A401.

Presentations

• Mehl, M. R., Polsinelli, A. J., Moseley, S. A., Raison, C. L., Sbarra, D. A., & Tackman, A. (2017, June). Using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) to identify the behavioral manifestations of the Big Five personality domains in daily life. Talk presented at the preconference for the 4th biennial meeting of the Association for Research in Personality. Sacramento, CA: Association for Research in Personality.
• Mehl, M. R. (2016, February). Mobile psychological science. Annual Meeting of the Council of Graduate Departments in Psychology. Tucson, Arizona.
• Mehl, M. R. (2016, January). Mobile sense and sensibility: Measurement considerations for collecting real-world data using mobile devices. Annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. San Diego, CA.
• Mehl, M. R. (2016, July). Mobile psychological science. Talk Presented to the Peermentoring Group "Mobile Psychological Science", University of Zurich. Zurich, Switzerland.
• Rentscher, K., & Mehl, M. R. (2016, May). Paternal Nurturance in its Natural Habitat: Observing Father-Toddler Interactions in Daily Life. Annual Meeting of the Association for Psychological Science. Chicago, Il.
• Mehl, M. R. (2015, February). Potentials of, challenges with, and some solutions for conducting naturalistic observation research with the EAR method. Annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
• Mehl, M. R. (2015, July). Neuroscience with an eye (or EAR) on the real world: A naturalistic observation approach to studying brain – daily behavior links. 5th International Summer School at Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. Leipzig, Germany.
• Mehl, M. R. (2015, May). Eavesdropping on health: The Sounds of Social Life project.. Working group meeting on Applied Signal Processing in Mental Health, University of Southern California.
• Mehl, M. R. (2015, May). The sounds of social life: Mobile sensing with the (human) EAR. Colloquium, Department of Psychology, University of California at Riverside.
• Mehl, M. R. (2015, November). The sounds of social life project: Mobile sensing with the (human) EAR. Colloquium, Department of Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin. Berlin, Germany: Department of Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin.
• Rentscher, K., & Mehl, M. R. (2015, February). Beyond the self in health: Studying relationships where they matter most. Annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
• Rentscher, K., & Mehl, M. R. (2015, February). Beyond the self in health: Studying relationships where they matter most. Symposium at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
• Rentscher, K., Rohrbaugh, M., & Mehl, M. R. (2015, February). Partner we-talk and communal coping in the context of couple-focused interventions for health problems. Symposium talk at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
• Sbarra, D. A., & Mehl, M. R. (2015, September). Sleep and daily rhythms following marital separation. Symposium talk at the annual meeting of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology.
• Mehl, M. R. (2014, April). The sounds of kindness: Observing positive interpersonal behavior in everyday life. Invited Colloquium talk at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Positive Psychology. Philadelphia, PA.
• Mehl, M. R. (2014, January). iEAR meets iCAMP: Conducting behavioral observation research in the real world. Talk delivered to iCAMP (Interdisciplinary Consortium on Advanced Motion Performance), Department of Surgery, University of Arizona. Tucson, AZ.
• Mehl, M. R. (2014, May). The sounds of social life: Mobile sensing with the (human) EAR. Invited symposium talk within the Presidential Cross-Cutting Theme Program on Science and Technology at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science. San Francisco, CA.
• Mehl, M. R. (2014, September). Conducting behavioral observation research in the real world: Mobile sensing with the (human) EAR. Invited talk at the International Normal Aging and Plasticity Imaging Center (INAPIC) Fall Workshop 2014. University of Zürich, Switzerland.
• Mehl, M. R., & Glisky, E. (2014, February). The importance of social engagement for successful aging. Arizona Conference on Successful Aging, University of Arizona. Tucson, AZ.
• Raison, C. L., Pace, T., & Mehl, M. R. (2014, August). Kindness! Molecules, Mind, Lives. Invited talk at Ben’s Bells 2014 Kindness Conference – Building the Science of Kindness Together. Tucson, AZ.
• Robbins, M. L., & Mehl, M. R. (2014, October). A Guide to Using the EAR (Electronically Activated Recorders) in Your Research. Social Personality Health Network Virtual Brownbag.
• Mehl, M. R. (2013, August). The sounds and science of kindness. Invited address delivered at the Ben’s Bells Second Annual Science of Kindness” Conference. Tucson, AZ.
• Mehl, M. R. (2013, June). The sounds of social life: Observing humans in their natural habitat. Invited colloquium talk delivered to the Department of Psychology, University of Zürich. Zürich, Switzerland.
• Holleran, S. E., & Mehl, M. R. (2007, 2007-01-01). How taking a word for a word can be problematic: Context-dependent linguistic markers of extraversion and neuroticism. Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Memphis, TN.
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  ;Submitted: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Holleran, S. E., Mehl, ., & M., R. (2007, 2007-05-01). Let me read your mind: Personality judgments on the basis of a person's natural stream of thought. Annual Meeting of the Association for Psychological Science. Washington, D.C..
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  ;Submitted: Yes;Collaborative with graduate student: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Holleran, S. E., Mehl, ., & M., R. (2007, 2007-08-01). A naturalistic observation approach to studying couples coping with cancer. American Cancer Society â€. Tucson, AZ.
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  ;Invited: Yes;Collaborative with graduate student: Yes;Type of Presentation: Community Outreach;
• Levitt, S., Holleran, S. E., & Mehl, M. R. (2007, 2007-01-01). Eavesdropping on social life: Predicting act-frequencies of daily behavior from thin slices of conversations. Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Memphis, TN.
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  ;Submitted: Yes;Collaborative with undergraduate student: Yes;Collaborative with graduate student: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Mehl, M. R. (2007, 2007-01-01). A naturalistic observation approach to studying the expression and perception of affect in daily life. Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Memphis, TN.
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  ;Submitted: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Mehl, M. R. (2007, 2007-06-01). Eavesdropping on daily life: A naturalistic observation approach to studying people's daily social environment and interactions. 4th Conference of the European Network of Ambulatory Assessment. Fribourg, Switzerland.
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  ;Submitted: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Mehl, M. R. (2007, 2007-10-01). Eavesdropping on personality: An unobtrusive observation approach to studying individual differences in daily social interactions. Center for Technology and Social Behavior, Northwestern University. Chicago, IL.
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  ;Invited: Yes;Interdisciplinary: Yes;Type of Presentation: University;
• Mehl, M. R. (2007, 2007-11-01). The mind in (inter-)action: An unobtrusive observation approach to studying psychological processes in daily life. Center for Consciousness Studies, University of Arizona. Tucson, AZ.
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  ;Invited: Yes;Interdisciplinary: Yes;Type of Presentation: University;
• Mehl, M. R., Vazire, S., & Clark, S. C. (2007, 2007-07-01). Happiness in (Inter-)action: A naturalistic observation approach to studying manifestations of well-being in daily life. Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences. Giessen, Germany.
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  ;Submitted: Yes;Other collaborative: Yes;Specify other collaborative: Collaborative with faculty member at other institution;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Robbins, M. L., Mehl, ., & M., R. (2007, 2007-10-01). A naturalistic observation approach to studying couples coping with cancer. American Cancer Society â€. Tucson, AZ.
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  ;Invited: Yes;Collaborative with graduate student: Yes;Type of Presentation: Community Outreach;
• Hasler, B., Mehl, M. R., & Bootzin, R. (2006, 2006-06-01). Circadian rhythms found in the naturalistic behavioral expression of positive but not negative mood. Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies. Salt Lake City, UT.
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  ;Invited: Yes;Interdisciplinary: Yes;Collaborative with graduate student: Yes;Collaborative with faculty member in unit: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Holleran, S. E., Hernandez, D., & Mehl, M. R. (2006, 2006-01-01). What's up? Personality and context effects on what students talk about in their daily conversations. Annual Meeting of the Association for Research in Personality. Palm Springs, CA.
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  ;Submitted: Yes;Collaborative with graduate student: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Kim, Y., RamĂ­rez-Esparza, N., Mehl, M. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006, 2008-01-01). Do Mexican-Americans behave like the Americans or the Mexicans? A follow up study using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR). Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Palm Springs, CA.
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  ;Submitted: Yes;Collaborative with graduate student: Yes;Other collaborative: Yes;Specify other collaborative: Collaborative with faculty member at other institution;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Mehl, M. R. (2006, 2006-01-01). The lay assessments of sub-clinical depression in daily life. Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Palm Springs, CA.
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  ;Submitted: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Mehl, M. R. (2006, 2006-04-01). Coping in (inter-)action: A naturalistic observation approach to studying communication processes in coping with cancer. Cancer Prevention and Control Grand Rounds Seminar at the Arizona Cancer Center, University of Arizona. Tucson, AZ.
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  ;Invited: Yes;Interdisciplinary: Yes;Type of Presentation: University;
• Mehl, M. R. (2006, 2006-09-01). Coping in (inter-)action: A naturalistic observation approach to studying everyday coping processes. National Centre for Competence in Research Affective Science, Department of Psychology, University of Fribourg. Fribourg, Switzerland.
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  ;Invited: Yes;Type of Presentation: University;
• Mehl, M. R. (2006, 2006-09-01). Ein Ansatz zur nonreaktiven Verhaltenbeobachtung von Persönlichkeitsprozessen im Feld. [An unobtrusive observation approach to studying personality processes in the field]. 45th Conference of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fĂĽr Psychologie. NĂĽrnberg, Germany.
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  ;Submitted: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Mehl, M. R. (2006, 2006-09-01). Personality in (inter-)action: An unobtrusive observation approach to studying conversation-based personality processes. International Post-Graduate College â€. Edinburgh, Scotland.
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  ;Invited: Yes;Interdisciplinary: Yes;Type of Presentation: University;
• Mehl, M. R. (2006, 2007-09-01). Coping in (inter-)action: A naturalistic observation approach to studying health-related communication processes in the real world. Behavioural Science Group, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge. Cambridge, UK.
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  ;Invited: Yes;Type of Presentation: University;
• Vazire, S., & Mehl, M. R. (2006, 2006-01-01). The accuracy of self- and other-predictions of behavior. Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Palm Springs, CA.
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  ;Submitted: Yes;Collaborative with graduate student: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Mehl, ., R., M., Pennebaker, ., & W., J. (2005, 2005-01-01). Do Mexicans and Americans behave differently? A cross-cultural study using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR). Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. New Orleans, LA.
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  ;Submitted: Yes;Collaborative with graduate student: Yes;Other collaborative: Yes;Specify other collaborative: Collaborative with faculty member at other institution;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Mehl, M. R. (2005, 2005-01-01). Going beyond self-reports in personality assessment. Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. New Orleans, LA.
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  ;Submitted: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Mehl, M. R. (2005, 2005-04-01). Coping with traumatic experiences: Emotional disclosure as intervention and natural process. Annual Meeting of the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback. Austin, TX.
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  ;Submitted: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Mehl, M. R. (2005, 2005-05-01). Psychological implications of daily life. Arizona Sleep Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona. Tucson, AZ.
  More info

  ;Invited: Yes;Type of Presentation: University;
• Mehl, M. R. (2005, 2005-08-01). Language, social interactions, and health: Studying coping in real time. Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association. Washington, D.C..
  More info

  ;Submitted: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Mehl, M. R. (2005, 2005-11-01). Coping in (inter-)action: A naturalistic observation approach to studying couples coping with breast cancer. Supportive Care Group Meeting of the Arizona Cancer Center, University of Arizona. Tucson, AZ.
  More info

  ;Invited: Yes;Type of Presentation: University;
• Mehl, M. R. (2005, 2006-01-01). Studying naturalistic person-environment interactions: An unobtrusive observation approach. Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. New Orleans, LA.
  More info

  ;Submitted: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Vazire, S., & Mehl, M. R. (2005, 2005-07-01). The person from the inside and outside. Hogan Assessment System, Inc.. Tulsa, OK.
  More info

  ;Invited: Yes;Collaborative with graduate student: Yes;Type of Presentation: Professional Organization;
• Vazire, S., Mehl, M. R., Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling., S. D. (2005, 2005-01-01). The multiple faces of reputation. Annual Meetings of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. New Orleans, LA.
  More info

  ;Submitted: Yes;Collaborative with graduate student: Yes;Other collaborative: Yes;Specify other collaborative: Collaborative with faculty member at other institution;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;

Poster Presentations

• Robbins, R., Glisky, E. L., & Mehl, M. R. (2017, Feb). Relation between social interaction and cognitive functioning in older adults: A feasibility study using the EAR technology. International Neuropsychological Society.
• Carey, A. L., Patel, J., Pressman, S. D., Gillath, O., & Mehl, M. R. (2015, March). Effects of intranasal oxytocin on social salience as measured by pronoun use. Poster presentation at the 73rd annual scientific meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society.
• Rentscher, K., Soriano, E., Rohrbaugh, M., & Mehl, M. R. (2015, March). Partner Pronoun Use during Couple-Focused Interventions for Alcohol Use Disorders Predicts Treatment Outcome. Poster presentation at the 73rd Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society.
• Brucks, M., Giacobbi, P., & Mehl, M. R. (2014, February). The effects of social media sharing on identity and physical activity adherence. Poster presented at the 15th Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Austin, TX.
• Carey, A. L., Brucks, M., Kufner, A. C., Holtzman, N., Deters, F. g., Back, M., Donnellan, B., Pennebaker, J. W., & Mehl, M. R. (2014, February). Narcissism and the use of personal pronouns revisited. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Austin, TX.
• Demiray, B., & Mehl, M. R. (2014, January). How much do people talk about their past in everyday life? A naturalistic observation study. Poster presented at the National Conference of the Swiss Society of Gerontology. Fribourg, Switzerland.
• Deters, g. F., Mehl, M. R., & Eid, M. (2014, February). Does posting Facebook status updates increase or decrease loneliness? An online social networking experiment and a replication (attempt). Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Austin, TX.
• Frauendorfer, D., Schmid Mast, M., Mehl, M. R., Nguyen, L., & Gatica-Perez, D. (2014, July). Applicant Verbal Immediacy in the Job Interview: Beneficial or Detrimental for the Job Interview Outcome?. Poster to be presented at the 17th meeting of the European Association of Social Psychology. Amsterdam, Netherlands.
• Herringer, G., Carey, A., & Mehl, M. R. (2014, May). Narrative-based Linguistic Predictors of Well-being. Poster presentation at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science. San Francisco, CA.
• Skoyen, J. A., Randall, A. K., Mehl, M. R., & Butler, E. A. (2014, March). Partner negativity when talking about health habits: Gender differences and associations with body mass.. Poster presentation at the American Psychosomatic Society Conference. San Francisco, CA.
• Rojo-Wissar, D. M., Dawson, S. C., Davidson, R. D., Sbarra, D. A., Beck, C. J., Mehl, M. R., & Bootzin, R. R. (2013, November). Non-parents recover faster than parents following divorce.. Student Showcase. Graduate and Professional Student Council Showcase University of Arizona.
• Shanholtz, C. E., Davidson, R. D., Rojo-Wissar, D. M., Mehl, M. R., & Beck, C. J. (2013, November). Painful feelings, family conflict, and language use in young adults from married and divorced families. Student Showcase. Tucson, Arizona: Graduate and Professional Student Council Showcase, University of Arizona.

Others

• Meier, T., Boyd, R. L., Pennebaker, J. W., Mehl, M. R., Martin, M., Wolf, M., & Horn, A. B. (2019, 2019). “LIWC auf Deutsch”: The Development, Psychometrics, and Introduction of DE-LIWC2015. PsyArXiv.
• Mehl, M. R. (2015, November). Conducting daily-life research with the EAR method. Graduate Student Workshop, Department of Psychology, University of Zuerich.