It’s Not That You Said It, It’s How You Said It: Exploring the Linguistic Mechanisms Underlying Values Affirmation Interventions at Scale

Abstract

Over the last decade, psychological interventions, such as the values affirmation intervention, have been shown to alleviate the male-female performance difference when delivered in the classroom, however, attempts to scale the intervention are less successful. This study provides unique evidence on this issue by reporting the observed differences between two randomized controlled implementations of the values affirmation intervention: (a) successful in-class and (b) unsuccessful online implementation at scale. Specifically, we use natural language processing to explore the discourse features that characterize successful female students’ values affirmation essays to gain insight on the underlying mechanisms that contribute to the beneficial effects of the intervention. Our results revealed that linguistic dimensions related to aspects of cohesion, affective, cognitive, temporal, and social orientation, independently distinguished between males and females, as well as more and less effective essays. We discuss implications for the pipeline from theory to practice and for psychological interventions.